The hall was indeed magnificent.  It was decorated with frescoes and mural paintings by well-known French artists.  It contained statues and paintings and clocks and vases that might have graced a museum.  The armour of knights stood about, and valuable trophies graced the wainscoted walls.

A wide carved staircase wound spirally up from one end; and at Ma’amselle’s suggestion, the girls were ushered at once to their room.  French maids were sent to them to unlock their boxes and assist with their toilettes, and Patty was glad that she now knew enough French at least to make herself understood.

Rosamond Barstow was a girl who never hesitated to get what she wanted if possible, and now it suited her purpose to dismiss the French maids; in her voluble if somewhat imperfect French, she told them that the young ladies wished to be alone for a time and would ring for the maids later.

“I just had to talk to you girls alone for a minute,” she exclaimed, “or I should have exploded.  Did you ever see such a gorgeous castle in this world?  I didn’t know your old Ma’amselle lived like this!  How shall we ever live up to it?”

“I didn’t know she lived like this, either,” said Patty, laughing at Rosamond’s expressions; “and I don’t care whether we can live up to it or not.  We’ll put on our best frocks and our best manners, and that’s all we can do.  But, oh girls, I feel like a princess in this room!”

“Then just come and look at mine,” cried Elise, who was in the next apartment.

The girls had been given rooms near each other and which, with their anterooms and dressing-rooms, filled up the whole of a large wing of the chateau.

Patty’s, as she expressed it to the other girls, looked more like a very large cretonne shirtwaist box than anything else.  For the walls and ceiling were covered with a chintz tapestry; the lambrequins, window curtains and door hangings were all of the same material and pattern, and the bed itself was draped and heavily curtained with the same.  The bed curtains and window curtains were fastened back with huge rosettes of the chintz, and Patty remarked that it must have been brought by the acre.

The furniture was of the quaintest old French pattern, and so old-fashioned and unusual were the appointments all about, that Patty knew neither the names nor the use of many of them.

“I’d rather sleep in a “cosy-corner” than in that bed,” remarked Rosamond; “I know that whole affair will tumble on your head in the night.  It’s perfectly gorgeous to look at, but seems to me these old things are ’most too old.  If I were Ma’amselle I’d root them all out and refurnish.”

“You’d be sent home if Ma’amselle heard you talk like that,” admonished Patty, “and I’m not a bit afraid of that tent arrangement tumbling down.  It’s most picturesque, and I shall lie in it, feeling like a retired empress.”

“Come, Rosamond,” said Elise, “call back those comic opera maids you sent away, and let’s get dressed.  We mustn’t keep Ma’amselle waiting, though I’d ever so much rather perch up here and talk by ourselves.  But she’s a dear old lady, and we must do our part as well as she does hers.”