"I felt quite proud when Mademoiselle Eliane said that. It has always been a gratification to me to find myself understood. And I felt still prouder when the little girl replied, looking at me gratefully,
"'How nice of him! He must have understood what I said to him in fun the other day. But O Mesdemoiselles,' she went on, '_may_ I come down to you?'
"'How can you get down?' said Mademoiselle Jeanne; 'and are you sure your mother would not mind?'
"'I have no mother,' said the little girl sadly, 'and my aunt would not mind, I know. She never minds what I do, if I don't make a noise.'
"'But how can you get down?' repeated Mademoiselle Jeanne, 'unless Dudu can take you on his back and fly with you!'
"'Oh, I can easily get down,' said the little girl; 'I have often planned it. I can climb over the railings at this end--look, there is a jutting-out ledge that I can put my foot on. Then I can stand a minute outside and jump--if you will come close to, so that I shall not roll down the terrace bank.'
"One after another they flew away Far up to the heavenly blue, To the better country, the upper day----" JEAN INGELOW.
"Little Charlotte climbed over the railings," continued Dudu, "but she did not jump down on the other side, for Mademoiselle Eliane, who was tall, found that by standing half-way up the bank she could reach the child and hand her down to Mademoiselle Jeanne, a little way below. There was a good deal of laughing over it all, and this helped them to make friends more quickly than anything else would have done. But indeed Charlotte was not a shy child, she had travelled too much and seen too many people to be so, and our young ladies, besides, were so kind and merry that no little girl could long have been strange with them. She ran about the garden in the greatest delight; her new friends showed her all their favourite nooks, and allowed her to make a bouquet of the flowers she liked best; and when they were tired of standing about they all sat down together on a bank, and Charlotte told to the young ladies the story of her short life. It was a sad little story; her father had died when she was very young, and her mother, whose health had never been good after the shock of his death, had gone to Italy with the aunt who had brought her up, in hopes of growing stronger. But through two or three years of sometimes seeming better and sometimes worse, she had really been steadily failing, and at last she died, leaving her poor little girl almost alone, 'for the old aunt was now,' said Charlotte, 'always ill, and not ill as mamma used to be,' she added, for however tired _she_ was, she always liked her little girl to be beside her, and never wearied of listening to all she had to say.