There was only one other beside Patrasche to whom Nello could talk at
all of his daring fantasies. This other was little Alois, who lived at
the old red mill on the grassy mound, and whose father, the miller, was
the best-to-do husbandman in all the village. Little Alois was only a
pretty baby with soft round, rosy features, made lovely by those sweet,
dark eyes that the Spanish rule has left in so many a Flemish face, in
testimony of the Alvan dominion, as Spanish art has left broadsown
throughout the country majestic palaces and stately courts, gilded
house-fronts and sculptured lintels,--histories in blazonry and poems in
stone.
Little Alois was often with Nello and Patrasche. They played in the
fields, they ran in the snow, they gathered the daisies and bilberries,
they went up to the old gray church together, and they often sat
together by the broad wood-fire in the mill-house. Little Alois, indeed,
was the richest child in the hamlet. She had neither brother nor sister;
her blue serge dress had never a hole in it; at Kermesse she had as many
gilded nuts and Agni Dei in sugar as her hands could hold; and when she
went up for her first communion her flaxen curls were covered with a cap
of richest Mechlin lace, which had been her mother's and her
grandmother's before it came to her.
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