"Yes, tease me," insisted Jeanne. "You know I hate people to go on about things I don't understand. Now you're to tell us a story at once, do you hear, Marcelline?"
Hugh said nothing, but he looked up in Marcelline's face with his grave blue eyes, and the old woman smiled again. She seemed as if she was going to speak, when just then a servant came upstairs to say that Jeanne's mother wished the children to go downstairs to her for a little. Jeanne jumped up, delighted to welcome any change.
"You must keep the story for another day, Marcelline," she said, as she ran out of the room.
"I am getting too old to tell stories," said Marcelline, half to herself, half to Hugh, who was following his cousin more slowly. He stopped for a moment.
"Too old?" he repeated.
"Yes, Monsieur Chéri, too old," the nurse replied. "The thoughts do not come so quickly as they once did, and the words, too, hobble along like lamesters on crutches."
"But," said Hugh, half timidly, "it is never—you would never, I mean, be too old to visit that country, where there are so many stories to be found?"
"Perhaps not," said Marcelline, "but even if I found them, I might not be able to tell them. Go and look for them for yourself, Monsieur Chéri; you have not half seen the tapestry castle yet."
But when Hugh would have asked her more she would not reply, only smiled and shook her head. So the boy went slowly downstairs after Jeanne, wondering what old Marcelline could mean, half puzzled and half pleased.
"Only," he said to himself, "if I get into the castle, Jeanne really must come with me, especially if it is to hear stories."