"'Oh, dear Mrs. Denny,' she said, 'I have had such a beautiful, lovely sleep. And you don't know what funny dreams I had. I dreamt that there were fairies hidden in all the little crinks of the curtains, and I heard them talking about me and telling each other that it was the first time I had slept there, and they wondered if I was a good little girl. And then I thought I heard one say "if she is good we can please her well." Wasn't it funny, Mrs. Denny?'
"'Very funny,' said Mrs. Denny, smiling. 'But you know, Miss Lena, I told you you'd have beautiful sleeps and dreams here, didn't I?'
"'Yes,' said Lena, 'and I'm so hungry, you don't know how hungry I am.'
"So she jumped up and washed and dressed and said her prayers, and came down to the kitchen as fresh and bright as a little girl could look. And Farmer Denny declared, if the roses in the gardens had been in bloom, he could have thought she had been stealing some for her cheeks—for already there was certainly more colour in them than when she had arrived. So the time passed very happily, and Lena did not feel the least dull either by day or by night.
"It had not been the time of the full moon when she first came, but a few days later it happened to be so, and as the weather was beautifully fine just then there were almost no clouds in the sky, and the moon had it all her own pretty way. One night Lena woke up suddenly—it seemed to her that she had been asleep a long, long time, and she didn't feel the least heavy or confused, but quite fresh and brisk as if she had had all the sleep she needed. And the shining moonlight came pouring in at the windows in a sort of wide band of light falling right across the bed and showing out most beautifully the colours and patterns on the old-fashioned curtains. They looked even brighter than by daylight, and as Lena lay and looked at them, she saw wonderful new pictures that she had never noticed before—the sort of pathway between the green branches and foliage that seemed to lead up to one of the little bowers or grottos grew more distinct, and as Lena tried to trace it out with her eyes, she suddenly saw a little figure moving along the path she was looking at. She rubbed her eyes and looked again—the figure had disappeared, but instead she saw clearly in the moonlight two butterflies flitting about the same path, darting first backwards, then forwards, as if inviting her to follow them.
"'If only I were a fly and could walk straight up a wall,' thought Lena, 'I'd really step up that curtain and see if I couldn't make my way into that grotto,' and then she laughed to herself at the fancy—'as if any one could walk into a picture!' she said.
"And then it seemed to her that the butterflies melted into the leaves—and there was no movement at all on the curtains.
"'It must have been the trembling of the moonlight that made me fancy it,' Lena said to herself. And the next morning when she awoke she stood up on tiptoe to examine the particular spot where she had seen these curious things. It looked just the same as the other parts of the curtains—only half hidden among the bushy leaves near the rustic doorway that Lena called the arbour, she found out a queer brown little face that she had not seen before. It seemed to her to peep out at her suddenly, and she fancied that it was the face of the figure she had watched moving along the path in the moonlight.
"'How funny that I never noticed it before,' she said, for when she looked at the same place on the pattern in other parts of the curtains she noticed the same queer little brown face, just like a monkey peeping from among the branches.
"She was so surprised that she thought she would ask Mrs. Denny if she had ever noticed 'the monkeys,' but somehow it went quite out of her head. It was not till the next night that she remembered anything more about them.