“I really think, Cheri,” said Jeanne, one evening, when they had been playing for a good while, “I really think our balls are getting to be rather like fairy ones.  Every day they go better and better.”

“Perhaps it is our hands that are getting to be like fairy ones,” said Hugh.  “But it is growing too dark to see to play any more.”

They were playing in the tapestry room, for Marcelline had told them they would have more space there, as it was large, and Hugh’s little bed in the corner did not take up much room.  It was getting dusk, for the days were not yet very long, though winter was almost over, and they had been playing a good while.  As Hugh spoke he gave the last ball a final throw high up in the air, higher than usual, for though Jeanne sprang forward to catch it, she missed it somehow.  It dropped to the ground behind her.

“O Cheri!” she cried, reproachfully, “that is the first time I have missed.  Oh dear, where can the ball have gone to?”

She stooped down to look for it, and in a minute Hugh was down beside her.  They felt all about, creeping on their hands and knees, but the missing ball was not to be so easily found.

[Illustration:  ’IS THIS A NEW PART OF THE HOUSE?’—­p. 201.]

“It must have got behind the tapestry,” said Hugh, pulling back as he spoke, a corner of the hangings close to where he and Jeanne were, which seemed loose.  And at the same moment both children gave a little cry of astonishment.  Instead of the bare wall which they expected to see, or to feel rather, behind the tapestry, a flight of steps met their view—­a rather narrow flight of steps running straight upwards, without twisting or turning, and lighted from above by a curious hanging lamp, hanging by long chains from a roof high up, which they could not see.

“Why, is this a new part of the house?” cried Hugh.  “Jeanne, did you know there were stairs behind the tapestry?”

“No, of course not,” said Jeanne.  “It must be a part of our house, I suppose, but I never saw it before.  Shall we go up, Cheri, and see where it takes us to?  Perhaps it’s another way to the white lady’s turret, and she’ll tell us another story.”

“No,” said Hugh, “I don’t believe it leads to her turret, and I don’t think we could find our way there again.  She seemed to mean we could never go again, I think.  But we may as well go up this stair, and see what we do find, Jeanne.”

And just at that moment a funny thing happened.  They heard a little noise, and looking up, there—­hopping down the stair before them, step by step, as if some one had started it from the top, came the lost ball, or what the children thought the lost ball, for with an exclamation Hugh darted forward to pick it up, and held it out to Jeanne.  But Jeanne looked at it with astonishment.

“Why, Cheri,” she cried, “it’s turned into gold.”

So it was, or at least into something which looked just like it.