“Oh, Jeannot, what nonsense!  As if I do not talk to a million strangers every summer! as if I could ever sell a flower if I did not!  You are cross this morning; that is what it is.”

“Do you know the man’s name?” said Jeannot, suddenly.

Bebee felt her cheeks grow warm as with some noonday heat of sunshine.  She thought it was with anger against blundering Jeannot’s curiosity.

“No! and what would his name be to us, if I did know it?  I cannot ask people’s names because they buy my roses.”

“As if it were only roses!”

There was the length of the garden between them, and Bebee did not hear as she sat on the edge of her roof with that light dreamful enjoyment of air and sky and coolness, and all the beauty of the dawning day, which the sweet vague sense of a personal happiness will bring with it to the dullest and the coldest.

“You are cross, Jeannot, that is what it is,” she said, after a while.  “You should not be cross; you are too big and strong and good.  Go in and get my bowl of bread and milk for me, and hand it to me up here.  It is so pleasant.  It is as nice as being perched on an apple-tree.”

Jeannot went in obediently and handed up her breakfast to her, looking at her with shy, worshipping eyes.  But his face was overcast, and he sighed heavily as he took up his hatchet and turned away; for he was the sole support of his mother and sisters, and if he did not do his work in Soignies they would starve at home.

“You will be seeing that stranger again?” he asked her.

“Yes!” she answered with a glad triumph in her eyes; not thinking at all of him as she spoke.  “You ought to go, Jeannot, now; you are so late.  I will come and see your mother to-morrow.  And do not be cross, you dear big Jeannot.  Days are too short to snip them up into little bits by bad temper; it is only a stupid sheep-shearer that spoils the fleece by snapping at it sharp and hard; that is what Father Francis says.”

Bebee, having delivered her little piece of wisdom, broke her bread into her milk and ate it, lifting her face to the fresh wind and tossing crumbs to the wheeling swallows, and watching the rose-bushes nod and toss below in the breeze, and thinking vaguely how happy a thing it was to live.

Jeannot looked up at her, then went on his slow sad way through the wet lavender-shrubs and the opening buds of the lilies.

“You will only think of that stranger, Bebee, never of any of us—­never again,” he said; and wearily opened the little gate and went through it, and down the daybreak stillness of the lane.  It was a foolish thing to say; but when were lovers ever wise?

Bebee did not heed; she did not understand herself or him; she only knew that she was happy; when one knows that, one does not want to seek much further.

She sat on the thatch and took her bread and milk in the gray clear air, with the swallows circling above her head, and one or two of them even resting a second on the edge of the bowl to peck at the food from the big wooden spoon; they had known her all the sixteen summers of her life, and were her playfellows, only they would never tell her anything of what they saw in winter over the seas.  That was her only quarrel with them.  Swallows do not tell their secrets They have the weird of Procne on them all.