She judged by her own penniless student lads; and she was angered with herself for feeling sorrow for this little silly thing that she had loved to torture.
"You have been bad and base to me; but now--I bless you, I love you, I will pray for you," said Bebee, in a swift broken breath, and with a look upon her face that startled into pain her callous enemy.
Then without another word, she thrust the paper in her bosom, and ran out of the square breathless with haste and with a great resolve.
He was ill--and he was poor! The brave little soul of her leaped at once to action.

He was sick, and far away; and poor they said.

All danger and all difficulty faded to nothing before the vision of his need.
Bebee was only a little foundling who ran about in wooden shoes; but she had the "dog's soul" in her--the soul that will follow faithfully though to receive a curse, that will defend loyally though to meet a blow, and that will die mutely loving to the last.
She went home, how she never knew; and without the delay of a moment packed up a change of linen, and fed the fowls and took the key of the hut down to old Jehan's cabin.

The old man was only half-witted by reason of his affliction for his dead daughter, but he was shrewd enough to understand what she wanted of him, and honest enough to do it.
"I am going into the city," she said to him: "and if I am not back to-night, will you feed the starling and the hens, and water the flowers for me ?" Old Jehan put his head out of his lattice: it was seven in the evening, and he was going to bed.
"What are you after, little one ?" he asked: going to show the fine buckles at a students' ball?
Nay, fie; that is not like you." "I am going to--pray--dear Jehan," she answered, with a sob in her throat and the first falsehood she ever had told.

"Do what I ask you--do for your dead daughter's sake--or the birds and the flowers will die of hunger and thirst.