“Yes, very,” replied Hugh.  “We’re very much obliged to you for bringing us up here.  Aren’t we, Jeanne?”

“Yes,” said Jeanne, “not counting fairies and adventures that’s to say, it’s very nice up here.”

“I often come up here at night,” said Dudu.  “I wonder how many thousand times I’ve been up here.”

“Are you so very old, Dudu?” said Jeanne, “as old as the white lady?”

“I daresay,” said Dudu, vaguely—­he seemed to be thinking to himself.  “Yes,” he continued, cocking his head on one side, “I suppose I am what you would call very old, though the white lady would consider me quite a baby.  Yes, I’ve seen queer things in my time.”

“What?” said the children both together, eagerly, “oh, do tell us some of them.  If you would tell us a story, Dudu, it would be as nice as an adventure.”

“Stories,” said Dudu, “are hardly in my line.  I might tell you a little of some things I’ve seen, but I don’t know that they would interest you.”

“Oh yes! oh yes!” cried the children, “of course they would.  And it’s so nice and warm up here, Dudu—­much warmer than in the house.”

“Sit down, then,” said Dudu, “here, in this corner.  You can lean against the parapet,”—­for a low wall ran round the roof—­“and look at the stars while you listen to me.  Well—­one day, a good long while ago you would consider it, no doubt——­”

“Was it a hundred years ago?” interrupted Jeanne.

“About that, I daresay,” said the raven carelessly.  “I cannot be quite exact to twenty or thirty years, or so.  Well, one day—­it was a very hot day, I remember, and I had come up here for a little change of air—­I was standing on the edge of the parapet watching our two young ladies who were walking up and down the terrace path down there, and thinking how nice they looked in their white dresses and blue sashes tied close up under their arms, like the picture of your great-grandmother as a young girl, in the great salon, Mademoiselle Jeanne.”

“Oh yes, I know it,” said Jeanne.  “She has a nice face, but I don’t think her dress is at all pretty, Dudu.”

“And I don’t suppose your great-grandmother would think yours at all pretty, either, Mademoiselle Jeanne,” said Dudu, with the queer sort of croak which he used for a laugh.  “It is one of the things that has amazed me very much in my observations—­the strange fancies the human race has about clothes.  Of course you are not so fortunate as we are in having them ready-made, but still I cannot understand why you don’t do the best you can—­adopt a pattern and keep to it always.  It would be the next best thing to having feathers, I should say.”

“I don’t think so,” said Jeanne.  “It would be very stupid every morning when you got up, and every time you were going out, or friends coming to see you, or anything like that—­it would be very stupid never to have to think, ‘What shall I put on?’ or to plan what colours would look nice together.  There would hardly be any use in having shops or dressmakers, or anything.  And certainly, Monsieur Dudu, I wouldn’t choose to be dressed like you, never anything but black—­as if one were always going to a funeral.”