across the road. Like
Monsieur Greville's, it was plain and solid, reaching as high as the
wall. Only the lime-trees and the second story windows of the house
could be seen above it. On the top it bore an iron medallion, on which
was fastened a huge pair of scissors. There was a smaller pair on each
gable of the house, also.

During the three months that Joyce had been in Monsieur Greville's
home, she had watched every day to see it open; but if any one ever
entered or left the place, it was certainly by some other way than this
queer gate.

What lay beyond it, no one could tell. She had questioned Gabriel the
coachman, and Berthe the maid, in vain. Madame Greville said that she
remembered having heard, when a child, that the man who built it was
named _Ciseaux_, and that was why the symbol of this name was hung over
the gate and on the gables. He had been regarded as half crazy by his
neighbors. The place was still owned by a descendant of his, who had
gone to Algiers, and left it in charge of two servants.

The peddler rang the bell of the gate several times, but failing to
arouse any one, shouldered his pack and went off grumbling. Then Joyce
climbed down and walked slowly up the gravelled path to the house.
Cousin Kate had just come back from Tours in the pony cart, and was
waiting in the door to see if Gabriel had all the bundles that she had
brought out with her.

Joyce followed her admiringly into the house. She wished that she could
grow up to look exactly like Cousin Kate, and wondered if she would
ever wear such stylish silk-lined skirts, and catch them up in such an
airy, graceful way when she ran up-stairs; and if she would ever have a
Paris hat with long black feathers, and always wear a bunch of sweet
violets on her coat.

She looked at herself in Cousin Kate's mirror as she passed it, and
sighed. "Well, I am better-looking than when I left home," she thought.
"That's one comfort. My face isn't freckled now, and my hair is more
becoming this way than in tight little pigtails, the way I used to
wear it."

Cousin Kate, coming up behind her, looked over her head and smiled at
the attractive reflection of Joyce's rosy cheeks and straightforward
gray eyes. Then she stopped suddenly and put her arms around her,
saying, "What's the matter, dear? You have been crying."

"Nothing," answered Joyce, but there was a quaver in her voice, and she
turned her head aside. Cousin Kate put her hand under the resolut