But Bebee now lay quite still and silent on her little bed; as quiet as
the waxen Gesu that they laid in the manger at the Nativity.
"If she would only speak!" the women and the children wailed, weeping
sorely.
But she never spoke; nor did she seem to know any one of them. Not even
the starling as he flew on her pillow and called her.
"Give her rest," they all said; and one by one moved away, being poor
folk and hard working, and unable to lose a whole day.
Mere Krebs stayed with her, and Jeannot sat in the porch where her little
spinning-wheel stood, and rocked himself to and fro; in vain agony,
powerless.
He had done all he could, and it was of no avail.
Then people who had loved her, hearing, came up the green lanes from the
city--the cobbler and the tinman, and the old woman who sold saints'
pictures by the Broodhuis. The Varnhart children hung about the garden
wicket, frightened and sobbing. Old Jehan beat his knees with his hands,
and said only over and over again, "Another dead--another dead!--the red
mill and I see them all dead!"
The long golden day drifted away, and the swans swayed to and fro, and
the willows grew silver in the sunshine.
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