Page:Quiller-Couch--Old fires and profitable ghosts.djvu/195

Rh lip, she stepped to the big bed and unfastened the corking-pins which held the green curtains together. As she pushed the curtains back I lifted myself on an elbow.

It was into a real theatre that I looked. She had transformed the whole level of the bed into a miniature stage, with buildings of cardboard, cleverly painted, and gardens cut out of silk and velvet and laid down, and rose-trees gummed on little sticks, and a fish-pond and brook of looking-glass, with embroidered flowers stuck along their edges, and along the paths (of real sand) a score of little dolls walking, all dressed in the uniform of the Grey Nuns. I declare it was so real, you could almost hear the fountain playing, with its jet d'eau of transparent beads strung on an invisible wire.

"But how pretty, mademoiselle!" I cried.

She clasped her hands nervously. "But is it like, Yann? It is so long ago that I may have forgotten. Tell me if it is like; or if there is anything wrong. I promise not to be offended."

"It is exactly like, mademoiselle."

"See, here is the Mother Superior; and this is Sœur Gabrielle. I have to make the dresses full and stiff, or they wouldn't stand up. And that, with the blue eyes, is Sœur Hyacinthe. She walks with me—this is I—as she always did. And what do you think? With the fifteen dolls that you have brought I am going to have a real Pardon,