So they kissed and made friends.  But still it seemed very queer to Hugh.  Till now Jeanne had always been eager to talk about the tapestry castle, and full of fancies about Dudu and Houpet and the rest of the animals, and anxious to hear Hugh’s dreams.  Now she seemed perfectly content with her every-day world, delighted with a new and beautiful china dinner-service which her godmother had sent her, and absorbed in cooking all manner of wonderful dishes for a grand dolls’ feast, for which she was sending invitations to all her dolls, young and old, ugly and pretty, armless, footless, as were some, in the perfection of Parisian toilettes as were others.  For she had, like most only daughters, an immense collection of dolls, though she was not as fond of them as many little girls.

“I thought you didn’t much care for dolls.  It was one of the things I liked you for at the first,” said Hugh, in a slightly aggrieved tone of voice.  Lessons were over, and the children were busy at the important business of cooking the feast.  Hugh didn’t mind the cooking; he had even submitted to a paper cap which Jeanne had constructed for him on the model of that of the “chef” downstairs; he found great consolation in the beating up an egg which Marcelline had got for them as a great treat, and immense satisfaction in watching the stewing, in one of Jeanne’s toy pans on the nursery fire, of a preparation of squashed prunes, powdered chocolate, and bread crumbs, which was to represent a “ragout a la”—­I really do not remember what.

“I thought you didn’t care for dolls, Jeanne,” Hugh repeated.  “It would be ever so much nicer to have all the animals at our feast.  We could put them on chairs all round the table.  That would be some fun.”

“They wouldn’t sit still one minute,” said Jeanne.  “How funny you are to think of such a thing, Cheri!  Of course it would be fun if they would, but fancy Dudu and Grignan helping themselves with knives and forks like people.”

Jeanne burst out laughing at the idea, and laughed so heartily that Hugh could not help laughing too.  But all the same he said to himself,

“I’m sure Dudu and the others could sit at the table and behave like ladies and gentlemen if they chose.  How very funny of Jeanne to forget about all the clever things they did!  But it is no use saying any more to her.  It would only make us quarrel.  There must be two Jeannes, or else ‘they,’ whoever they are, make her forget on purpose.”

And as Hugh, for all his fancifulness, was a good deal of a philosopher, he made up his mind to amuse himself happily with little Jeanne as she was.  The feast was a great success.  The dolls behaved irreproachably, with which their owner was rather inclined to twit Hugh, when, just at the end of the banquet, greatly to his satisfaction, a certain Mademoiselle Zephyrine, a blonde with flaxen ringlets and turquoise blue eyes, suddenly toppled over, something having no doubt upset her equilibrium, and fell flat on her nose on the table.