sion. We determined to go to the South of France. I could
amuse you children by a description of our journey--journeys in those
days really were much more amusing than now; but I must hasten on to the
end of my story. We had fixed upon Pau as our head-quarters, and we
arrived there early in November. What a different thing from our
November at home! I could hardly believe it _was_ November; it would
have seemed to me far less wonderful to have been told I had been asleep
for six months, and that _really_ it was May, and not November at all,
than to have awakened as I did, that first morning after our arrival,
and to have seen out of the window the lovely sunshine and bright blue
sky, and summer-look of warmth, and comfort, and radiance!

'We had gone to an hotel for a few days, intending to look out for a
little house, or "apartement" (which, children, does not mean the same
thing as our English lodgings by any means), at our leisure. Your
grandmother was not rich, and the coming so far cost a great deal. The
hotel we had been recommended to, was a very comfortable one, though not
one of the most fashionable, and the landlord was very civil, as some
friend who had stayed with him the year before had written about our
coming. He showed us our rooms himself, and hoped we should like them,
and then he turned back to say he trusted we should not be disturbed by
the voices of some children in the next "salon." He would not have
risked it, he said, had he been able to help it, but there were no
other rooms vacant, and the family with the children were leaving the
next day. Not that they were noisy children by any means; they were very
_chers petits_, but there _were_ ladies, to whom the very name of
children in their vicinity was----here the landlord held up his hands
and made a grimace!

'"Then they must be old maids!" I said, laughing, "which mamma and I are
not. We love children," at which Mr. Landlord bowed and smiled, and said
something complimentary about mademoiselle being so "aimable."

'I listened for the children's voices that evening, and once or twice I
heard their clear merry tones. But as for any "disturbance," one might
as well have complained of a cuckoo in the distance, as of anything we
heard of our little neighbours. We did not see them; only once, as I was
running along the passage, I caught a glimpse at the other end of a
little pinafored figure led by a nurse, disappearing through a doorway.
I did not