As Marcelline was preparing to put Jeanne to bed that night, the little girl suddenly put her arms round her nurse's neck, and drew down her old face till it was on a level with her own. "Look in my face, Marcelline," she said. "Now look in my face and confess. Now, didn't you know that mamma had got a letter to-night and what it said, and was not that how you knew my wish would come true?" Marcelline smiled. "That was one way I knew, Mademoiselle," she said. "Well, it shows I'm right not to believe in fairies any way. I really did think at first that the fairies had told you something, but----" suddenly she stopped as the remembrance of her adventure in the tapestry room returned to her mind. "Dudu may be a fairy, whether Marcelline has anything to do with fairies or not," she reflected. It was better certainly to approach such subjects respectfully. "Marcelline," she added, after a little silence, "there is only one thing I don't like. I wish the little cousin were not going to sleep in the tapestry room." "Not in the tapestry room, Mademoiselle?" exclaimed Marcelline, "why, it is the best room in the house! You, who are so fond of stories, Mademoiselle--why there are stories without end on the walls of the tapestry room; particularly on a moonlight night." "_Are_ there?" said Jeanne. "I wonder then if the little cousin will be able to find them out. If he does he must tell them to me. Are they fairy stories, Marcelline?" But old Marcelline only smiled. CHAPTER II. PRINCE CHERI. "I'll take my guinea-pig always to church." CHILD WORLD. If it were cold just then in the thick-walled, well-warmed old house, which was Jeanne's home, you may fancy _how_ cold it was in the rumbling diligence, which in those days was the only way of travelling in France. And for a little boy whose experience of long journeys was small, this one was really rather trying. But Jeanne's cousin Hugh was a very patient little boy. His life, since his parents' death, had not been a _very_ happy one, and he had learnt to bear troubles without complaining. And now that he was on his way to the kind cousins his mother had so often told him of, the cousins who had been so kind to _her_, before she had any home of her own, his heart was so full of happiness that, even if the journey had been twice as cold and uncomfortable, he would not have thought himself to be pitied.