r was a pair of little
wooden shoes, fashioned like the ones that Jules had worn when she
first knew him. They were only half as long as her thumb, and wrapped in
a paper on which was written that Jules himself had whittled them out
for her, with Henri's help and instructions.

"What little darlings!" exclaimed Joyce. "I hope he will think as much
of the scrap-book that I made for him as I do of these. I know that he
will be pleased with the big microscope that Cousin Kate bought
for him."

She spread all the things out on the table, and gave the slippers a
final shake. A red morocco case, no larger than half a dollar, fell out
of the toe of one of them. Inside the case was a tiny buttonhole watch,
with its wee hands pointing to six o'clock. It was the smallest watch
that Joyce had ever seen, Cousin Kate's gift. Joyce could hardly keep
back a little squeal of delight. She wanted to wake up everybody on the
place and show it. Then she wished that she could be back in the brown
house, showing it to her mother and the children. For a moment, as she
thought of them, sharing the pleasure of their Christmas stockings
without her, a great wave of homesickness swept over her, and she lay
back on the pillow with that miserable, far-away feeling that, of all
things, makes one most desolate.

Then she heard the rapid "tick, tick, tick, tick," of the little watch,
and was comforted. She had not realized before that time could go so
fast. Now thirty seconds were gone; then sixty. At this rate it could
not be such a very long time before they would be packing their trunks
to start home; so Joyce concluded not to make herself unhappy by longing
for the family, but to get as much pleasure as possible out of this
strange Christmas abroad.

That little watch seemed to make the morning fly. She looked at it at
least twenty times an hour. She had shown it to every one in the house,
and was wishing that she could take it over to Jules for him to see,
when Monsieur Ciseaux's carriage stopped at the gate. He was on his way
to the Little Sisters of the Poor, and had come to ask Joyce to drive
with him to bring his sister home.

He handed her into the carriage as if she had been a duchess, and then
seemed to forget that she was beside him; for nothing was said all the
way. As the horses spun along the road in the keen morning air, the old
man was busy with his memories, his head dropped forward on his breast.
The child watched him, enteri