In a strange house, anything might happen. In all the fairy tales Hortense read, the houses were deliriously strange . . . and now she was going to stay in one, with her grandparents!
It stood at the foot of a steep mountain -- three stories high, with high, shuttered windows. Inside, the old-fashioned furniture along the walls seemed to smile at her. A spidery staircase with dark wood banisters rose steeply from one side and wound away out of sight.
Later, a great tortoise-shell cat sauntered in while her grandparents were talking -- about ghosts! "That cat . . . he understands every word," Hortense said to herself with conviction.
She began to be a little afraid of the cat . . . for everything in the room disliked him, she sensed. The lowboy no longer smiled but looked rather solemn and foolish. The chairs stood stiffly, as though offended at his presence. The white owl on the shelf glared fiercely with his yellow eyes, and the firedogs in the hearth fairly snapped their teeth!