nity. "Then mademoiselle might not object to
stopping in the garden of the villa which we are now approaching," she
said. "My friend, Clotilde Robard, is housekeeper there, and I have a
very important message to deliver to her."

Joyce had no objection. "But, Marie," she said, as she paused at the
gate, "I think I'll not go in. It is so lovely and warm out here in the
sun that I'll just sit here on the steps and wait for you."

Five minutes went by and then ten. By that time Joyce had decided how to
spend every centime in the whole twenty francs, and Marie had not
returned. Another five minutes went by. It was dull, sitting there
facing the lonely highway, down which no one ever seemed to pass. Joyce
stood up, looked all around, and then slowly sauntered down the road a
short distance.

Here and there in the crevices of the wall blossomed a few hardy wild
flowers, which Joyce began to gather as she walked. "I'll go around this
bend in the road and see what's there," she said to herself. "By that
time Marie will surely be done with her messages."

No one was in sight in any direction, and feeling that no one could be
in hearing distance, either, in such a deserted place, she began to
sing. It was an old Mother Goose rhyme that she hummed over and over, in
a low voice at first, but louder as she walked on.

Around the bend in the road there was nothing to be seen but a lonely
field where two goats were grazing. On one side of it was a stone wall,
on two others a tall hedge, but the side next her sloped down to the
road, unfenced.

Joyce, with her hands filled with the yellow wild flowers, stood looking
around her, singing the old rhyme, the song that she had taught the baby
to sing before he could talk plainly:

"Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn,
The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn.
Little Blue Blue, oh, where are you?
Oh, where are you-u-u-u?"

The gay little voice that had been rising higher and higher, sweet as
any bird's, stopped suddenly in mid-air; for, as if in answer to her
call, there was a rustling just ahead of her, and a boy who had been
lying on his back, looking at the sky, slowly raised himself out of
the grass.

For an instant Joyce was startled; then seeing by his wooden shoes and
old blue cotton blouse that he was only a little peasant watching the
goats, she smiled at him with a pleasant good morning.

He did not answer, but came towards her with a dazed