five o'clock
But Bébée danced with the child , and did not hear . Whose fête day had ever begun like this one of hers ? She was a little poet at heart , and should not have cared for such vanities ; but when one is only sixteen , and has only a little rough woollen frock , and sits in the market place or the lace-room , with other girls around , how should one be altogether indifferent to a broad , embossed , beautiful shield of silver that sparkled with each step one took ? A quarter of an hour idle thus was all , however , that Bébée or her friends could spare at five o'clock on a summer morning , when the city was waiting for its eggs , its honey , its flowers , its cream , and its butter , and Tambour was shaking his leather harness in impatience to be off with his milk-cans . So Bébée , all holiday though it was , and heroine though she felt herself , ran indoors , put up her cakes and cherries , cut her two basketfuls out of the garden , locked her hut , and went on her quick and happy little feet along the grassy paths toward the city . The sorting and tying up of the flowers she always left until she was sitting under the awning in front of the Broodhuis ; the same awning , tawny as an autumn pear and weather-blown as an old sail , which had served to shelter Antoine Mäes from heat and rain through all the years of his life . `` Go to the Madeleine ; you will make money there , with your pretty blue eyes , Bébée , '' people had said to her of late ; but Bébée had shaken her head .