"Only--instead of those leaves, flowers and pomegranates; and in lieu of that tinkling guitar, a voice whose notes are esteemed like king's jewels; and in place of those little green arbors, great white palaces, cool and still, with ilex woods and orange groves and sapphire seas beyond them.

Would you like to come there, Bebee ?--and wear laces such as you weave, and hear singing and laughter all night long, and never work any more in the mould of the garden, or spin any more at that tiresome wheel, or go any more out in the wind, and the rain, and the winter mud to the market ?" Bebee listened, leaning her round elbows on the table, and her warm cheeks on her hands, as a child gravely listens to a fairy story.

But the sumptuous picture, and the sensuous phrase he had chosen, passed by her.
It is of no use to tempt the little chaffinch of the woods with a ruby instead of a cherry.

The bird is made to feed on the brown berries, on the morning dews, on the scarlet hips of roses, and the blossoms of the wind-tossed pear boughs; the gem, though it be a monarch's, will only strike hard and tasteless on its beak.
"I would like to see it all," said Bebee, musingly trying to follow out her thoughts.

"But as for the garden work and the spinning--that I do not want to leave, because I have done it all my life; and I do not think I should care to wear lace--it would tear very soon; one would be afraid to run; and do you see I know how it is made--all that lace.