"It's a' silly havers, child—it's poetry, and nae sense in it," replied Elspeth crossly. "Noo harken aboot the apple.
'Syne they came to a garden green——'"
But at the second attempt to pluck the apple the door opened and Mlle. Angèle came in.
"My sister desires that you will go now," she said to Elspeth. "Mrs. Barnes is waiting to take you to her house. We shall expect you to-morrow morning at seven o'clock."
Though she had a pleasant smile on her face there was no resisting the quiet authority of her tone. Mrs. Saunders rose with much reluctance, bent over her charge and gave him a kiss—by no means the ritual of every night—and with a very high head left the room. Mlle. de Chaulnes came over to the bed.
"Are you comfortable, little one?" she asked kindly. "You will not be frightened? My sister sleeps next door, and if you want anything, you have only to call her."
"Yes, thank you, Madame," said Anne-Hilarion a little shyly, and she too kissed him and went away.
(2)
But the mere absence of alarm is not in itself sufficient to induce sleep. M. le Comte de Flavigny had seen too much that day for ready slumber, and now he began to see it all over again: the busy road from Rochester, the stage-coach and its passengers—the fat traveller in a shawl, the thin one who had, to Elspeth's intense indignation, offered him a sip of rum—and everything in Rose Cottage, down to the grey cat. The last object of which he thought was his goldfish, on the dressing-table, for just as he was making up his mind to get up and look at it, he fell fast asleep.
In his sleep he had a curious dream. He was in a little boat on the sea, he and a lady with a crown on her head. By that he knew that she was the Queen of Elfland, though she had not, as the ballad said, a skirt of grass-green silk and a velvet mantle, and he wondered why she was in a boat, and what she had done with her horse and all its silver bells. Then suddenly she changed to Mme. de Chaulnes, and, bending over him where he lay in the boat, shook him slightly and said, "Anne, Anne, do you remember now the name of the place at which the expedition was to land?" And he tried hard to remember it, while the boat rocked under him and the water was full of goldfish, but all that he could recall was the name of the shop where the goldfish had been bought yesterday—Hardman. "Think!" said the Queen. "Are you sure you cannot remember it?" Then the sea began to get very rough and dark, and Anne saw that on it were floating feather-beds and shoes with cork heels, as it said in 'Noroway-over-the-foam,' and so he looked over the side of the boat, and down, very far down at the bottom, he could see Sir Patrick Spens lying drowned on the seaweed, with a great many other people . . . and somehow Sir Patrick Spens was also M. le Chevalier de la Vireville. And as he looked he became aware that in some way it was his, Anne-Hilarion's, fault that they were all drowned—or at least that it would be his fault if he did something or other, but the dreadful thing was that he could not find out what that something was which he must avoid. And the Queen—or Mme. de Chaulnes—who was still in the boat, said, laughing: