“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 Cheri,” said Jeanne.  “You must call me some night when it’s very pretty, Cheri, 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 Cheri,” 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.”