“Have you never been there since, Marcelline?” she asked.

Marcelline smiled again her funny smile.

“Oh dear, yes,” she said; “often, very often.  I should not have been near so happy as I am if I had not often visited that country.”

“Dear me,” exclaimed Jeanne, “how very queer!  I had no idea of that.  You haven’t been there for a great many years any way, Marcelline.  I heard mamma telling a lady the other day that she never remembered your going away, not even for a day—­never since she was born.”

“Ah!” said Marcelline, “but, Mademoiselle, we don’t always know what even those nearest us do.  I might have gone to that country without your mamma knowing.  Sometimes we are far away when those beside us think us close to them.”

“Yes,” said Hugh, looking up suddenly, “that is true, Marcelline.”

What she said made him remember Dudu’s remark about Jeanne the night before, that she was far, far away, and he began to feel that Marcelline understood much that she seldom alluded to.

But Jeanne took it up differently.  She jumped on to Marcelline’s knee and pretended to beat her.

“You naughty little old woman,” she said; “you very naughty little old woman, to say things like that to puzzle me—­just what you know I don’t like.  Go back to your own country, naughty old Marcelline; go back to your fairyland, or wherever it was you came from, if you are going to tease poor little Jeanne so.”

“Tease you, Mademoiselle?” Marcelline repeated.

“Yes, tease me,” insisted Jeanne.  “You know I hate people to go on about things I don’t understand.  Now you’re to tell us a story at once, do you hear, Marcelline?”

Hugh said nothing, but he looked up in Marcelline’s face with his grave blue eyes, and the old woman smiled again.  She seemed as if she was going to speak, when just then a servant came upstairs to say that Jeanne’s mother wished the children to go downstairs to her for a little.  Jeanne jumped up, delighted to welcome any change.

“You must keep the story for another day, Marcelline,” she said, as she ran out of the room.

“I am getting too old to tell stories,” said Marcelline, half to herself, half to Hugh, who was following his cousin more slowly.  He stopped for a moment.

“Too old?” he repeated.

“Yes, Monsieur Cheri, too old,” the nurse replied.  “The thoughts do not come so quickly as they once did, and the words, too, hobble along like lamesters on crutches.”

“But,” said Hugh, half timidly, “it is never—­you would never, I mean, be too old to visit that country, where there are so many stories to be found?”

“Perhaps not,” said Marcelline, “but even if I found them, I might not be able to tell them.  Go and look for them for yourself, Monsieur Cheri; you have not half seen the tapestry castle yet.”

But when Hugh would have asked her more she would not reply, only smiled and shook her head.  So the boy went slowly downstairs after Jeanne, wondering what old Marcelline could mean, half puzzled and half pleased.