see them dancing on moonlight nights."

Meanwhile, Mary had been unpacking the trunk and laying Hortense's
things away in the drawers of a great bureau.

"Now we will go down and have tea," said Mary. "Let me brush your hair
a bit."

After this was done, they went downstairs again, passed the big clock
that winked and said, "Tick-tock, hello," and entered a sunny room
where Grandmother sat in her easy chair.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER II

"_And the darker the room grew, the more it seemed alive._"

In Grandmother's room there were tall south windows reaching nearly to
the ceiling. It must have been bright with sunshine in midday, but it
was nearly evening now and the lower halves of the windows were closed
with white shutters, which gave the room a very cosy appearance. In the
white marble fireplace a cheerful fire was burning, and above it on the
mantel was a large stuffed owl as white as the marble on which he was
perched. He seemed quite alive and very wise, his great yellow eyes
shining in the firelight. Hortense glanced at him now and then, and
always his bright eyes seemed fixed upon her.

"I believe he could talk if he would," thought Hortense. "Sometime when
we're alone, I'll ask him if he can't."

"Now, if you'll call your grandfather, we'll have tea," said
Grandmother. "He's in his library in the next room."

Hortense ran to do as she was told. The library was walled with books,
thousands of them, and near a window Grandfather sat at a big desk,
busily writing. He looked up when Hortense entered, and laid down his
pen to take her on his knee.

Grandfather had white hair, and bushy white eyebrows over piercing dark
eyes. Hortense had always thought him very handsome, particularly when
he walked, for he was tall and very straight. She thought he must look
like a Sultan or Indian Rajah, such as is told of in the _Arabian
Nights_, for his skin was dark, and when he told her stories of his
youth and his wanderings about the earth, she wondered if he weren't
really some foreign prince merely pretending to be her grandfather. He
had been in many strange places in India, Africa, and the South Seas,
and when he chose, he could tell wonderful stories of his adventures.

While Grandfather held her on his lap, Hortense gazed at a strange
bronze figure which stood on a stone pedestal beside his desk. It was a
bronze image such as Hortense had seen pictured in books--some sort of
an idol, she thought. T