I wouldn't mind now if Houpet was a fairy, he's so gentle and loving; but Dudu would be a sort of ogre fairy, he's so black and solemn.

Oh dear, how he startled me! How did he get up there?
I'm very glad _I_ don't sleep in the tapestry room." But when she got down to the brightly-lighted salon her cheeks were so pale and her eyes so startled-looking that her mother was quite concerned, and eagerly asked what was the matter.
"Nothing," said Jeanne at first, after the manner of little girls, and boys too, when they do not want to be cross-questioned; but after a while she confessed that she had run into the tapestry room on her way down, and that the moonlight made the figures look as if they were moving--and--and--that Dudu came and stood on the window-sill and croaked at her.
"Dudu stood on the window-sill outside the tapestry room!" repeated her father; "impossible, my child! Why, Dudu could not by any conceivable means get up there; you might as well say you saw the tortoise there too." "If I had called him perhaps he _would_ have come too; I believe Dudu and he are great friends," thought Jeanne to herself, for her mind was in a queer state of confusion, and she would not have felt very much astounded at anything.

But aloud she only repeated, "I'm sure he was 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 Eugene about it.