"It really was a rather wonderful bed. It was a regular four-poster, if you know what that is--a bed with wooden posts at each corner, and curtains running all round, so that once you were inside it, you could if you liked draw them so close that it was like being in a tent." "I know," said Maudie, "I've seen beds like that. But I don't think Hoodie and the boys have--let me see; oh yes, I can tell them what it's like. It's like the bed in our _best_ doll-house--the one with pink curtains trimmed with white. You know?" "Yes," said Hoodie, "the one where Miss Victoria has been so ill in, since she's got too ugly to sit in the drawing-room. I know." "But it's such a weeny bed," said Hec, "was zour little girl no bigger than zat little dolly, Cousin Magdalen?" "_Of course_," said Maudie, hastily. "How stupid you are, Hec." "Maudie," said her godmother, and Maudie got very red. "Maudie meant it was the same _shape_ as that, but much bigger, Hec dear. Just the same as the piano in the study is the same shape as the one in the doll-house, only much bigger." "Oh zes," said Hec. "A great deal bigger than any of the beds people have now," continued Magdalen. "It was really big enough to have held six little Lenas instead of one. But it was the curtains that made it so particularly wonderful. They were very old, but the colours were still quite bright, they had been washed so carefully. And the pattern was something I really could not describe if I tried--it was the most delicious muddle of flowers, and trailing leaves and birds, and here and there a sort of little basket-work pattern that looked like a summer-house or the entrance to a grotto. "Lena stood feasting her eyes upon these marvellous curtains. "'I never did see anything so nice,' she said. 'Can I see the pictures when I'm _in_ the bed, Mrs. Denny?' "'Oh yes, my dear, they're double--the same inside as out,' said Mrs. Denny, turning them as she spoke. "'How nice!' said Lena; 'well, if I'm late for breakfast, Mrs. Denny, you'll know that it'll be with looking at the curtains.' "'I'm not afraid but that you'll sleep well in this bed, Miss Lena,' said the old nurse. 'There's something very lucky about it. Many a one has told me they never had such sweet sleep or such pretty dreams as in our old bed. It's maybe that the room is a very pleasant one, never either too hot or too cold, and there's a beautiful scent of lavender, Miss Lena, all through the bed, as you'll find.' "Lena poked her little nose into the pillows on the spot. "'Oh yes,' she said, 'it's _beautiful_.' "'But you must be, or any way you should be, hungry, my dear,' said nurse. 'And tea's all ready. Come away down-stairs, and then you must go to bed early, you know. I must take great care of you, so that you'll look quite a different little girl when you go home again.'