there, dear papa."

And to satisfy her, her kind father, though he was not so young as he
had been, and the bad weather made him very rheumatic, mounted upstairs
to the tapestry room, and carefully examined the window inside and out.

"Nothing of the kind to be seen, my little girl," was his report.
"Master Dudu was hobbling about in the snow on his favourite terrace
walk as usual. I hope the servants give him a little meat in this cold
weather, by the by. I must speak to Eugène about it. What you fancied
was Dudu, my little Jeanne," he continued, "must have been a branch of
the ivy blown across the window. In the moonlight, and with the
reflections of the snow, things take queer shapes."

"But there is no wind, and the ivy doesn't grow so high up, and the ivy
could not have _croaked_," thought Jeanne to herself again, though she
was far too well brought up a little French girl to contradict her
father by saying so.

"Perhaps so, dear papa," was all she said.

But her parents still looked a little uneasy.

"She cannot be quite well," said her mother. "She must be feverish. I
must tell Marcelline to make her a little tisane when she goes to bed."

"Ah, bah!" said Jeanne's white-headed papa. "What we were speaking of
will be a much better cure than tisane. She needs companionship of her
own age."