ny motion so delightful.

"_What_ a good coachman Houpet is!" exclaimed Hugh. "I never should have
thought he could drive so well. How does he know the road, Jeanne?"

"There isn't any road, so he doesn't need to know it," said Jeanne.
"Look before you, Cheri. You see there is no road. It makes itself as we
go, so we can't go wrong."

Hugh looked straight before him. It was as Jeanne had said. The trees
grew thick and close in front, only dividing--melting away like a
mist--as the quaint little carriage approached them.

Hugh looked at them with fresh surprise.

"Are they not real trees?" he said.

"Of course they are," said Jeanne. "Now they're beginning to change;
that shows we are getting to the middle of the forest. Look, look,
Cheri!"

Hugh "looked" with all his eyes. What Jeanne called "changing" was a
very wonderful process. The trees, which hitherto had been of a very
bright, delicate green, began gradually to pale in colour, becoming
first greenish-yellow, then canary colour, then down to the purest
white. And from white they grew into silver, sparkling like innumerable
diamonds, and then slowly altered into a sort of silver-grey, gradually
rising into grey-blue, then into a more purple-blue, till they reached
the richest corn-flower shade. Then began another series of lessening
shades, which again, passing through a boundary line of gold, rose by
indescribable degrees to deep yet brilliant crimson. It would be
impossible to name all the variations through which they passed. I use
the names of the colours and shades which are familiar to you,
children, but the very naming any shade gives an unfair idea of the
marvellous delicacy with which one tint melted into another,--as well
try to divide and mark off the hues of a dove's breast, or of the sky at
sunset. And all the time the trees themselves were of the same form and
foliage as at first, the leaves--or fronds I feel inclined to call them,
for they were more like very, very delicate ferns or ferny grass than
leaves--with which each branch was luxuriantly clothed, seeming to bathe
themselves in each new colour as the petals of a flower welcome a flood
of brilliant sunshine.

"Oh, how pretty!" said Hugh, with a deep sigh of pleasure. "It is like
the lamps, only much prettier. I think, Jeanne, this must be the country
of pretty colours."

"This forest is called the Forest of the Rainbows. I know _that_," said
Jeanne. "But I don't think they call this