The next day, waking with a radiant little soul as a bird in a forest wakes in summer Bebee was all alone in the lane by the swans' water.

In the gray of the dawn all the good folk except herself and lame old Jehan had tramped off to a pilgrimage, Liege way, which the bishop of the city had enjoined on all the faithful as a sacred duty.
Bebee doing her work, singing, thinking how good God was, and dreaming over a thousand fancies of the wonderful stories he had told her, and of the exquisite delight that would lie for her in watching for him all through the shining hours, Bebee felt her little heart leap like a squirrel as the voice that was the music of heaven to her called through the stillness,--"Good day, pretty one! you are as early as the lark, Bebee.

I go to Mayence, so I thought I would look at you one moment as I pass." Bebee ran down through the wet grass in a tumult of joy.

She had never seen him so early in the day--never so early as this, when nobody was up and stirring except birds and beasts and peasant folk.
She did not know how pretty she looked herself; like a rain-washed wild rose; her feet gleaming with dew, her cheeks warm with health and joy; her sunny clustering hair free from the white cap and tumbling a little about her throat, because she had been stooping over the carnations.
Flamen loosed the wicket latch, and thought there might be better ways of spending the day than in the gray shadows of old Mechlin.
"Will you give me a draught of water ?" he asked her as he crossed the garden.
"I will give you breakfast," said Bebee, happy as a bird.

She felt no shame for the smallness of her home; no confusion at the poverty of her little place; such embarrassments are born of self-consciousness, and Bebee had no more self-consciousness than her own sweet, gray lavender-bush blowing against the door.
The lavender-bush has no splendor like the roses, has no colors like the hollyhocks; it is a simple, plain, gray thing that the bees love and that the cottagers cherish, and that keeps the moth from the homespun linen, and that goes with the dead to their graves.
It has many virtues and infinite sweetness, but it does not know it or think of it; and if the village girls ever tell it so, it fancies they only praise it out of kindness as they put its slender fragrant spears away in their warm bosoms.