Curiously enough Hugh had gone to sleep that night without any thought of tapestry adventures. He and Jeanne had been very merry indeed; they had been dressing up, and playing delightful tricks—such as tapping at the salon door, and on being told to come in, making their appearance like two very, very old peasants, hobbling along on sticks—Jeanne with a cap and little knitted shawl of Marcelline's, Hugh with a blouse and cotton nightcap, so that Jeanne's mother quite jumped at first sight of the quaint little figures. Then Jeanne dressed up like a fairy, and pretended to turn Hugh into a guinea-pig, and they got Nibble up into the nursery, and Hugh hid in a cupboard, and tried to make his voice sound as if it came from Nibble, and the effect of his ventriloquism was so comical that the children laughed till they actually rolled on the floor. And they had hardly got over the laughing—though Marcelline did her best to make them sit still for half an hour or so before going to bed—when it was time to say good-night and compose themselves to sleep.
"I shan't be able to go to sleep for ever so long," said Hugh; "I shall stay awake all the night, I believe."
"Oh no, you won't," said Marcelline, with a smile, as she went off with the light.
And strange to say, hardly had she shut the door when Hugh did fall asleep—soundly asleep. He knew no more about who he was, or where he was, or anything—he just slept as soundly as a little top, without dreaming or starting in the least, for—dear me, I don't know for how long!—any way it must have been for several hours, when—in the strange sudden way in which once or twice before it had happened to him to awake in this curious tapestry room, he opened his eyes as if startled by an electric shock, and gazed out before him, as much awake as if he had never been asleep in his life.
What had awakened him, and what did he see? He could hardly have told what had awakened him but for what he now saw and heard. A voice, a very well-known little voice, was speaking to him. "Chéri dear," it said, "Chéri, I have come for you. And see what I have got for you." And there before him stood little Jeanne—but Jeanne as he had never seen her before. She seemed all glistening and shining—her dress was of some kind of sparkling white, and round her waist was a lovely silver girdle—her sleeves too were looped up with silver bands, and, prettiest of all, two snow-white wings were fastened to her shoulders. She looked like a fairy queen, or like a silvery bird turned into a little girl. And in her hand she held another pair of wings exactly like her own.
Hugh gazed at her.
"Have you been dressing up?" he said, "and in the middle of the night? oh how funny! But O, Jeanne, how pretty you look!"
Jeanne laughed merrily. "Come, get up quick, then," she said, "and I'll make you pretty too. Only I can't promise you a head-dress like mine, Chéri."
She gave her head a little toss, which made Hugh look at it. And now he noticed that on it she wore something very funny indeed, which at first, being black—for Jeanne's hair, you know, was black too—had not caught his attention. At first he thought it was some kind of black silk hood or cap, such as he had seen worn by some of the peasants in Switzerland, but looking again—no, it was nothing of the kind—the head-dress had a head of its own, and as Hugh stared, it cocked it pertly on one side in a way Hugh would have known again anywhere. Yes, it was Dudu, sitting on Jeanne's smooth little head as comfortably as if he had always been intended to serve the purpose of a bonnet.
"Dudu!" exclaimed Hugh.