It was only little Bebee, but they had spoilt the child from her infancy, and were used to obey her.
The painter took a long time.

He set about it with the bold ease of one used to all the intricacies of form and color, and he had the skill of a master.

But he spent more than half the time looking idly at the humors of the populace or watching how the treasures of Bebee's garden went away one by one in the hands of strangers.
Meanwhile, ever and again, sitting on the edge of her stall, with his colors and brushes tossed out on the board, he talked to her, and, with the soft imperceptible skill of long practice in those arts, he drew out the details of her little simple life.
There were not always people to buy, and whilst she rested and sheltered the flowers from the sun, she answered him willingly, and in one of her longer rests showed him the wonderful stockings.
"Do you think it _could_ be the fairies ?" she asked him a little doubtfully.
It was easy to make her believe any fantastical nonsense; but her fairies were ethereal divinities.

She could scarcely believe that they had laid that box on her chair.
"Impossible to doubt it!" he replied, unhesitatingly.

"Given a belief in fairies at all, why should there be any limit to what they can do?
It is the same with the saints, is it not ?" "Yes," said Bebee, thoughtfully.
The saints were mixed up in her imagination with the fairies in an intricacy that would have defied the best reasonings of Father Francis.
"Well, then, you will wear the stockings, will you not?
Only, believe me, your feet are far prettier without them." Bebee laughed happily, and took another peep in the cosy rose-satin nest.
But her little face had a certain perplexity.