she was Nancy Tremain. In some of the humbler Italian inns in which she and
Jack had been so happy, the people had never even heard of a bell!

She jumped out of bed, put on her pretty, pale blue dressing-gown--it was a
fancy of Jack's that she should wear a great deal of pale blue and
white--and then she opened the door a little way.

"Madame!" she called out gaily. "Madame Poulain?" and wondered whether her
French would run to the words "hot water"--yes, she thought it would. "Eau
chaude"--that was hot water.

But there came no answering cry, and again, this time rather impatiently,
she called out, "Madame Poulain?"

And then the shuffling sounds of heavy footsteps made Nancy shoot back from
the open door.

"Yuss?" muttered a hoarse voice.

This surely must be the loutish-looking youth who, so Nancy suddenly
remembered, knew a little English.

"I want some hot water," she called out through the door. "And will you
please ask your aunt to come here for a moment?"

"Yuss," he said, in that queer hoarse voice, and shuffled downstairs again.
And there followed, floating up from below, one of those quick, gabbling
interchanges of French words which Nancy, try as she might, could not
understand.