But Janey was enchanted with the corner of the wood which her father had bought. He took them to see it in the afternoon, Antoine and Baptiste both following--Antoine as the possible wood-cutter for the removal of the trees, Baptiste as the host and natural care-taker of the strangers. With the latter, Janey had already made great friends in her fashion. The means of communication between them was limited, but that has little to do with real amity. When there had been something in the conversation which pleased Janey, she left her father’s hand, and came up running and smiling to this new ally. “N’est-ce pas, Monsieur Baptiste?” Janey cried; and the young fellow replied with a broad grin, “Oui, mademoiselle.” Janey’s little laugh rang through the trees after every interpellation of this kind. It was an admirable joke, which pleased everybody. As for Antoine, he did his best to attract a similar confidence, but without any success. He was not young and smiling like his rival. He was a tall and powerful man, with the head of a brigand, black-eyed and black-bearded, and his smile was uneasy and unreal; but Baptiste was brown and curly, his hair all hyacinthine, his boyish moustache curling over a perpetual smile. And the road into the woods was so cheerful and bright, that no wonder Janey was delighted. The oaks had begun to blaze in red and brown; the feathery larches drooped their delicate branches against an illuminated background of autumn tints; big green laurels and hollies made solid towers of green among the varied copse. A few magnificent foxgloves still remaining threw up their shafts of flowers, and there was not a bit of brushwood that had not some cluster of scarlet haws or trailing russet of a bramble to make it bright. The corner which Mr Goulburn had bought was like a little pine-forest in itself--a regiment of tall and even firs. The sun was slanting in upon the red and golden columns upon which the dense yet varied roof of green was supported. Underneath, the brown carpet of fallen foliage, years upon years of growth, made slippery elastic cushions, which, with here and there a bank of emerald moss breaking through, were warm and soft. There were projections of twisted roots to make thrones of, and a tinkle of an unseen rivulet close by filled the air with music, when it could be heard for the sighing and murmuring overhead as the wind swept through the boughs. “Oh, let us never do away again! let us stay here for ever and ever!” cried little Janey; and then her little voice rang off into peals of laughter as she called out, “N’est-ce pas, Monsieur Baptiste?” “Oui, ma bonne petite demoiselle,” said Baptiste, with his genial grin. He did not understand a word, but what did that matter? Mr Goulburn was touched by his child’s enthusiasm. “We shall not stay for ever and ever, but we may stay a good long time, my little Janey,” he said; “it is a pretty place and quiet. Even Helen thinks so, who is never pleased.”