CHAPTER IX.
But Bebee, who only saw in the sun the sign of daily work, the brightness of the face of the world, the friend of the flowers, the harvest-man of the poor, the playmate of the birds and butterflies, the kindly light that the waking birds and the ringing carillon welcomed,--Bebee, who was not at all afraid of him, smiled at his rays and saw in them only fairest promise of a cloudless midsummer day as she gave her last crumb to the swallows, dropped down off the thatch, and busied herself in making bread that Mere Krebs would bake for her, until it was time to cut her flowers and go down into the town.
When her loaves were made and she had run over with them to the mill-house and back again, she attired herself with more heed than usual, and ran to look at her own face in the mirror of the deep well-water--other glass she had none.
She was used to hear herself called pretty; bat she had never thought about it at all till now.

The people loved her; she had always believed that they had only said it as a sort of kindness, as they said, "God keep you." But now-- "He told me I was like a flower," she thought to herself, and hung over the well to see.

She did not know very well what he had meant; but the sentence stirred in her heart as a little bird under tremulous leaves.
She waited ten minutes full, leaning and looking down, while her eyes, that were like the blue iris, smiled back to her from the brown depths below.

Then she went and kneeled down before the old shrine in the wall of the garden.
"Dear and holy Mother of Jesus, I do thank you that you made me a little good to look at," she said, softly.

"Keep me as you keep the flowers, and let my face be always fair, because it is a pleasure to _be_ a pleasure.
Ah, dear Mother, I say it so badly, and it sounds so vain, I know.