e, considering the two chickens in his arms, and
then he walked away.

"What a _very_ nice man!" said Denny, feeling very proud of herself, and
quite forgetting that she, too, had not been without some fears. "You
see, Baby dear, how foolish it is to be frightened. I _told_ you there
couldn't be any ogres here."

Herr Baby did not answer for a moment. He had certainly very much
admired Denny's courage, but still he wasn't quite sure that she had not
been a _very_ little afraid, just for a minute, when he had called out
"There he is!"

"What would you have done if there _had_ been a' ogre, Denny?" he said.

"Oh, bother," said Denny, "what's the good of talking about things that
_couldn't_ be? Talk of something sensible, Baby."

Baby grew silent again. They walked on slowly down the garden path.

"Denny," said Baby, in a minute or two, "didn't the little man say
somefin about mother having a party?"

Denny pricked up her ears at this. Parties of all kinds pleased her very
much.

"Did he?" she said, "I didn't notice. He said something about Madame's
dinner, but I didn't think he meant a dinner-_party_. Perhaps he did
though. We'll ask. I'd like mother to have some parties; it seems quite
a long time since I had one of my best frocks on to come down to the
drawing-room before dinner, the way we did at home. And I know mother
and auntie have friends here. I heard that stupid little footman asking
Linley what day 'Miladi' would 'receive,' that means have visitors,
Baby."

Denny's tongue had run on so fast, that it had left Baby's wits some way
behind. They had stopped short at the first idea of a party.

"Mother likes to make _werry_ pitty dinners when she has parties," he
said. "Mother told him that were why she were so solly when him breaked
her's pitty glasses."

"I don't know what you're talking about, Baby," said Denny. "Let's have
a race. I'll give you a start."

CHAPTER VII.

BABY'S SECRET

"'Pussy, only you I'll tell,
For you can keep secrets well;
Promise, pussy, not a word.'
Pussy reared her tail and purred."

There was a cat at the Villa Desiree, Baby's, and Denny's, and "all of
them's house," as Baby would have called it. Where the cat came from I
don't know--whether it belonged to the villa and let itself out with it
every winter, like the furniture, or whether it was really the cat of
Madame Jean-Georges, and had followed Monsieur Jean-Georges back one
evening when he