The Tapestry Room | Page 8

they are! I didn't think
that was what tapestry meant. Oh, how glad I am this is to be my
room--is yours like this too, Jeanne?"
Jeanne shook her head.
"Oh no, Chéri," she said. "My room has a nice paper--roses and things
like that running up and down. I am very glad my room is not like this.
I don't think I should like to see all these funny creatures in the night.
You don't know how queer they look in the moonlight. They quite
frightened me once."

Hugh opened his blue eyes very wide.
"Frightened you?" he said. "I should never be frightened at them. They
are so nice and funny. Just look at those peacocks, Jeanne. They are
lovely."
Jeanne still shook her head.
"I don't think so," she said. "I can't bear those peacocks. But I'm very
glad you like them, Chéri."
"I wish it was moonlight to-night," continued Hugh. "I don't think I
should go to sleep at all. I would lie awake watching all the pictures. I
dare say they look rather nice in the firelight too, but still not so nice as
in the moonlight."
"No, Monsieur," said Marcelline, who had followed the children into
the room. "A moonlight night is the time to see them best. It makes the
colours look quite fresh again. Mademoiselle Jeanne has never looked
at the tapestry properly by moonlight, or she would like it better."
"I shouldn't mind with Chéri," said Jeanne. "You must call me some
night when it's very pretty, Chéri, and we'll look at it together."
Marcelline smiled and seemed pleased, which was rather funny. Most
nurses would have begun scolding Jeanne for dreaming of such a thing
as running about the house in the middle of the night to admire the
moonlight on tapestry or on anything else. But then Marcelline
certainly was rather a funny person.
"And the cochon de Barbarie, where is he to sleep, Monsieur?" she said
to Hugh.
Hugh looked rather distressed.
"I don't know," he said. "At home he slept in his little house on a sort of
balcony there was outside my window. But there isn't any balcony
here--besides, it's so very cold, and he's quite strange, you know."

He looked at Marcelline, appealingly.
"I daresay, while it is so cold, Madame would not mind if we put him
in the cupboard in the passage," she said; but Jeanne interrupted her.
"Oh no," she said. "He would be far better in the chickens' house. It's
nice and warm, I know, and his cage can be in one corner. He wouldn't
be nearly so lonely, and to-morrow I'll tell Houpet and the others that
they must be very kind to him. Houpet always does what I tell him."
"Who is Houpet?" said Hugh.
"He's my pet chicken," replied Jeanne. "They're all pets, of course, but
he's the most of a pet of all. He lives in the chicken-house with the two
other little chickens. O Chéri," she added, glancing round, and seeing
that Marcelline had left the room, "do let us run out and peep at Houpet
for a minute. We can go through the tonnelle, and the chickens' house
is close by."
She darted off as she spoke, and Hugh, nothing loth, his precious
Nibble still in his arms, followed her. They ran down the long corridor,
on to which opened both the tapestry room and Jeanne's room at the
other end, through a small sort of anteroom, and then--for though they
were upstairs, the garden being built in terraces was at this part of the
house on a level with the first floor--then straight out into what little
Jeanne called "the tonnelle."
Hugh stood still and gazed about him with delight and astonishment.
"O Jeanne," he exclaimed, "how pretty it is! oh, how very pretty!"
Jeanne stopped short in her progress along the tonnelle.
"What's pretty?" she said in a matter-of-fact tone. "Do you mean the
garden with the snow?"
"No, no, that's pretty too, but I mean the trees. Look up, Jeanne, do."
There was no moonlight, but the light from the windows streamed out

to where the children stood, and shone upon the beautiful icicles on the
branches above their heads. For the tonnelle was a kind of arbour--a
long covered passage made by trees at each side, whose boughs had
been trained to meet and interlace overhead. And now, with their fairy
tracery of snow and frost, the effect of the numberless little branches
forming a sparkling roof was pretty and fanciful in the extreme. Jeanne
looked up as she was told.
"Yes," she said, "it's pretty. If it was moonlight it would be prettier still,
for then we could see right along the tonnelle to the end."
"I don't think that would be prettier,"