winter noon
`` It used to fly there , -- one could see it coming up half a mile off , -- just a pale yellow flake on the wind , like a tress of my hair , he would say . No , no , I could not go away ; he may come to-night , to-morrow , any time ; he is not drowned , not my man ; he was all I had , and God is good , they say . '' Bébée listened and looked ; then kissed the old shaking hand and took up the lace patterns and went softly out of the room without speaking . When old Annémie watched at the window it was useless to seek for any word or sign of her : people said that she had never been quite right in her brain since that fatal winter noon sixty years before , when the coaster had brought into port the broken beam of the good brig `` Fleur d'Epine . '' Bébée did not know about that , nor heed whether her wits were right or not . She had known the old creature in the lace-room where Annémie pricked out designs , and she had conceived a great regard and sorrow for her ; and when Annémie had become too ailing and aged to go herself any longer to the lace-maker 's place , Bébée had begged leave for her to have the patterns at home , and had carried them to and fro for her for the last three or four years , doing many other little useful services for the lone old soul as well , -- services which Annémie hardly perceived , she had grown so used to them , and her feeble intelligence was so sunk in the one absorbing idea that she must watch all the days through and all the years through for the coming of the dead man and the lost brig. Bébée put the lace patterns in her basket , and trotted home , her sabots clattering on the stones . `` What it must be to care for any one like that ! ''