And I have seen Kermesse once at Malines--it was beautiful.

I went with Mere Dax, but it cost a great deal I know, though she did not let me pay." "You little fool!" the fruit girl would say, and grin, and eat a pear.
But the good honest old women who sat about in the Grande Place, hearing, had always taken the fruit girl to task, when they got her by herself.
"Leave the child alone, you mischievous one," said they.

"Be content with being base yourself.

Look you, Lisette; she is not one like you to make eyes at the law students, and pester the painter lads for a day's outing.
Let her be, or we will tell your mother how you leave the fruit for the gutter children to pick and thieve, while you are stealing up the stairs into that young French fellow's chamber.

Oh, oh! a fine beating you will get when she knows!" Lisette's mother was a fierce and strong old Brabantoise who exacted heavy reckoning with her daughter for every single plum and peach that she sent out of her dark sweet-smelling fruit shop to be sunned in the streets, and under the students' love-glances.
So the girl took heed, and left Bebee alone.
"What should I want her to come with us for ?" she reasoned with herself.
"She is twice as pretty as I am; Jules might take to her instead--who knows ?" So that she was at once savage and yet triumphant when she saw, as she thought, Bebee drifting down the high flood of temptation.
"Oh, oh, you dainty one!" she cried one day to her.