"
Love to be perfect must be a religion, as well as a passion. Bebee's was
so. Like George Herbert's serving-maiden, she swept no specks of dirt
away from a floor without doing it to the service of her lord.
Only Bebee's lord was a king of earth, made of earth's dust and vanities.
But what did she know of that?
CHAPTER XXV.
The winter went by, and the snow-drops and crocus and pale hepatica
smiled at her from the black clods. Every other springtime Bebee had run
with fleet feet under the budding trees down into the city, and had sold
sweet little wet bunches of violets and brier before all the snow was
melted from the eaves of the Broodhuis.
"The winter is gone," the townspeople used to say; "look, there is Bebee
with the flowers."
But this year they did not see the little figure itself like a rosy
crocus standing against the brown timbers of the Maison de Roi.
Bebee had not heart to pluck a single blossom of them all. She let them
all live, and tended them so that the little garden should look its best
and brightest to him when his hand should lift its latch.
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