Yes, I've seen queer things in my time."

"_What?_" said the children both together, eagerly, "oh, do tell us some
of them. If you would tell us a story, Dudu, it would be as nice as an
adventure."

"Stories," said Dudu, "are hardly in my line. I might tell you a little
of some things I've seen, but I don't know that they would interest
you."

"Oh yes! oh yes!" cried the children, "of course they would. And it's so
nice and warm up here, Dudu--much warmer than in the house."

"Sit down, then," said Dudu, "here, in this corner. You can lean against
the parapet,"--for a low wall ran round the roof--"and look at the stars
while you listen to me. Well--one day, a good long while ago you would
consider it, no doubt----"

"Was it a hundred years ago?" interrupted Jeanne.

"About that, I daresay," said the raven carelessly. "I cannot be quite
exact to twenty or thirty years, or so. Well, one day--it was a very hot
day, I remember, and I had come up here for a little change of air--I
was standing on the edge of the parapet watching our two young ladies
who were walking up and down the terrace path down there, and thinking
how nice they looked in their white dresses and blue sashes tied close
up under their arms, like the picture of your great-grandmother as a
young girl, in the great salon, Mademoiselle Jeanne."

"Oh yes, I know it," said Jeanne. "She has a nice face, but _I_ don't
think her dress is at all pretty, Dudu."

"And I don't suppose your great-grandmother would think yours at all
pretty, either, Mademoiselle Jeanne," said Dudu, with the queer sort of
croak which he used for a laugh. "It is one of the things that has
amazed me very much in my observations--the strange fancies the human
race has about clothes. Of course you are not so fortunate as we are in
having them ready-made, but still I cannot understand why you don't do
the best you can--adopt a pattern and keep to it always. It would be the
next best thing to having feathers, _I_ should say."

"I don't think so," said Jeanne. "It would be very stupid every morning
when you got up, and every time you were going out, or friends coming to
see you, or anything like that--it would be _very_ stupid never to have
to think, 'What shall I put on?' or to plan what colours would look nice
together. There would hardly be any use in having shops or dressmakers,
or anything. And _certainly_, Monsieur Dudu, I wouldn't choose to be
dressed like you, never anything bu