The Tapestry Room | Page 8

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," said Hugh; "the dark at the end makes it look so nice--like as if it was a fairy door into some queer place--a magic cavern, or some place like that."
"So it does," said Jeanne. "What nice fancies you have, Chéri! But I wish you could see the tonnelle in summer. It is pretty then, with all the leaves on. But we must run quick, or else Marcelline will be calling us before we have got to the chicken-house."
Off she set again, and Hugh after her, though not so fast, for Jeanne knew every step of the way, and poor Hugh had never been in the garden before. It was not very far to go, however--the chickens' house was in a little courtyard just a few steps from the tonnelle, and guided by Jeanne's voice in front as much as by the faint glimpses of her figure, dark against the snow, Hugh soon found himself safe beside her at the door of the chickens' house. Jeanne felt about till she got hold of the latch, which she lifted, and was going to push open