ious tarts for me. They're the best in the world.

"I can't think of anything else to-day, but that walk which you
will be taking soon without me. I can shut my eyes and see every
inch of the way, as it used to look when we went home just after
sunset. There is the river Loire all rosy red in the after-glow,
and the bridge with the soldiers marching across it; and on the
other side of the river is the little old village of St.
Symphorian with its narrow, crooked streets. How I love every
old cobblestone! You will see the fat old women rattling home in
their market carts, and hear the clang and click of wooden shoes
down the streets. Then there'll be the high gate of customs in
the old stone wall that fences in the village, and the country
road beyond. You'll climb the hill with the new moon coming up
behind the tall Lombardy poplars, and go on between the fields,
turning brown in the twilight, till the Gate of the Giant
Scissors looms up beside the road like a picture out of some
fairy tale. A little farther on you'll come to Madame's dear old
villa with the high wall around it, and the laurel hedges and
lime-trees inside.

"I wonder which of you will have my room with the blue parrots
on the wall-paper. Oh, I'm _homesick_ to go back. Yet, isn't it
strange, when I was there I used to long so for America, that
many a time I climbed up in the pear-tree at the end of the
garden for a good cry. Don't forget to swing up into that
pear-tree. There's a fine view from the top.

"When you see Jules, ask him to show you the goats that chewed
up the cushions of the pony cart, the day we had our
Thanksgiving barbecue in the garden. I fairly ache to be with
you. Please write me a good long letter and tell me what you are
doing; and whenever you hear the nightingales in Madame's
garden, and the cathedral bells tolling out across the Loire,
think of your loving JOYCE."

"Let's do those things to-morrow," exclaimed Lloyd, as she folded the
letter and slipped it back into its envelope. "I don't want to waste time
on any old chateaux with the Gate of the Giant Scissors just across the
river, that we haven't seen yet."

"I have heard about that gate ever since we left America," said Mr.
Forbes, laughingly. "Nobody has taken the trouble to inform me why it is
so important, or why it was selected for a meeting-pl