e lay there, trying to imagine how it must feel to have a mother
and sisters and brothers all as fond of each other as Joyce's were, and
to live in the midst of such good times as always went on in the little
brown house.

Monsieur Ciseaux, sitting by his fire with the door open between the two
rooms, listened to Joyce's merry chatter with almost as much interest as
Jules. He would have been ashamed to admit how eagerly he listened for
her step on the stairs every day, or what longings wakened in his
lonely old heart, when he sat by his loveless fireside after she had
gone home, and there was no more sound of children's voices in the
next room.

There had been good times in the old Ciseaux house also, once, and two
little brothers and a sister had played in that very room; but they had
grown up long ago, and the ogre of selfishness and misunderstanding had
stolen in and killed all their happiness. Ah, well, there was much that
the world would never know about that misunderstanding. There was much
to forgive and forget on both sides.

Joyce had a different story for each visit. To-day she had just finished
telling Jules the fairy tale of which he never tired, the tale of the
giant scissors.

"I never look at those scissors over the gate without thinking of you,"
said Jules, "and the night when you played that I was the Prince, and
you came to rescue me."

"I wish I could play scissors again, and rescue somebody else that I
know," answered Joyce. "I'd take poor old Number Thirty-one away from
the home of the Little Sisters of the Poor."

"What's Number Thirty-one?" asked Jules. "You never told me about that."

"Didn't I?" asked Joyce, in surprise. "She is a lonely old woman that
the sisters take care of. I have talked about her so often, and written
home so much, that I thought I had told everybody. I can hardly keep
from crying whenever I think of her. Marie and I stop every day we go
into town and take her flowers. I have been there four times since my
first visit with madame. Sometimes she tells me things that happened
when she was a little girl here in France, but she talks to me oftenest
in English about the time when she lived in America. I can hardly
imagine that she was ever as young as I am, and that she romped with her
brothers as I did with Jack."

"Tell some of the things that she told you," urged Jules; so Joyce began
repeating all that she knew about Number Thirty-one.

It was a pathetic little ta