THE GIANT SCISSORS
By Annie Fellows Johnston
CHAPTER II. A NEW FAIRY TALE.
CHAPTER III. BEHIND THE GREAT GATE.
CHAPTER IV. A LETTER AND A MEETING.
CHAPTER V. A THANKSGIVING BARBECUE.
CHAPTER VI. JOYCE PLAYS GHOST.
CHAPTER VII. OLD "NUMBERTHIRTY-ONE".
CHAPTER VIII. CHRISTMAS PLANS AND ANACCIDENT.
CHAPTER IX. A GREAT DISCOVERY.
CHAPTER X. CHRISTMAS.
JULES
THE GATE OF THE GIANT SCISSORS.
CHAPTER I.
IN THE PEAR-TREE.
Joyce was crying, up in old Monsieur Gréville's tallestpear-tree. She had gone down to the farthest corner of the garden,out of sight of the house, for she did not want any one to knowthat she was miserable enough to cry.
She was tired of the garden with the high stone wall around it,that made her feel like a prisoner; she was tired of French verbsand foreign faces; she was tired of France, and so homesick for hermother and Jack and Holland and the baby, that she couldn't helpcrying. No wonder, for she was only twelve years old, and she hadnever been out of the little Western village where she was born,until the day she started abroad with her Cousin Kate.
Now she sat perched up on a limb in a dismal bunch, her chin inher hands and her elbows on her knees. It was a gray afternoon inNovember; the air was frosty, although the laurel-bushes in thegarden were all in bloom.
"I s'pect there is snow on the ground at home," thought Joyce,"and there's a big, cheerful fire in the sitting-room grate.
"Holland and the baby are shelling corn, and Mary is popping it.Dear me! I can smell it just as plain! Jack will be coming in fromthe post-office pretty soon, and maybe he'll have one of myletters. Mother will read it out loud, and there they'll all be,thinking that I am having such a fine time; that it is such a grandthing for me to be abroad studying, and having dinner served atnight in so many courses, and all that sort of thing. They don'tknow that I am sitting up here in this pear-tree, lonesome enoughto die. Oh, if I could only go back home and see them for even fiveminutes," she sobbed, "but I can't! I can't! There's a whole wideocean between us!"
She shut her eyes, and leaned back against the tree as thatdesolate feeling of homesickness settled over her like a greatmiserable ache. Then she found that shutting her eyes, and thinkingvery hard about the little brown house at home, seemed to bring itinto plain sight. It was like opening a book, and seeing pictureafter picture as she turned the pages.
There they were in the kitchen, washing dishes, she and Mary;and Mary was standing on a soap-box to make her tall enough tohandle the dishes easily. How her