The guards looked at her carelessly, joked the hawker on her pretty face,
looked the papers over, and let her through, believing her the child of
the clock-maker of the Hartz. Some lies are blessed as truth.
"I have done wrong in the law, but not before God, I think, little one,"
said the pedler. "Nay, do not thank me, or go on like that; we are in
sight of the customs men still, and if they suspected, it would be the
four walls of a cell only that you and I should see to-night. And now
tell me your story, poor maiden: why are you on foot through a strange
country?"
But Bebee would not tell him her story: she was confused and dazed still.
She did not know rightly what had happened to her; but she could not talk
of herself, nor of why she travelled thus to Paris.
The old hawker got cross at her silence, and called her an unthankful
jade, and wished that he had left her to her fate, and parted company
with her at two cross-roads, saying his path did not lie with hers; and
then when he had done that, was sorry, and being a tenderhearted soul,
hobbled back, and would fain press a five-franc piece on her; and Bebee,
refusing it all the while, kissed his old brown hands and blessed him,
and broke away from him, and so went on again solitary towards St.
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