o difference to the little mother, placidly sewing by the last
rays of daylight at one of the western windows; but the noise grated on
Joyce's mood.

Joyce had finished setting the supper-table, and while she waited for
the potatoes to boil she stood with her face pressed against the kitchen
window, looking gloomily out into the back yard.

It was not a cheerful outlook. Nothing was to be seen but the high board
alley fence with a broken chicken-coop leaning against it, the
weather-beaten old stable, and a scraggy, dripping peach-tree. The yard
was full of puddles, and still the rain splashed on. The sight made
Joyce want to cry.

"If I wasn't at home," she said to herself, "I should think that I am
homesick, for I feel the way I did that day up in Monsieur Greville's
pear-tree in the old French garden. Then I was tired of France and
everything foreign, and would have given all I owned to be back in
America. Now I am here with mother and the children, but still I am as
unhappy and dissatisfied as I was then. I wonder why!"

It had been less than a year since Joyce had had that wonderful winter
in Touraine with her cousin Kate, but it seemed such a long, long time
ago, in looking back upon it. She had settled down into the common
humdrum round of duties so completely that sometimes it seemed to her
that she had never been away at all; that she must have dreamed that
year into her life, or read about it as happening to some other girl.

As she stood with her face pressed against the window-pane, the noise in
the dining-room suddenly ceased, and Mary came into the kitchen,
followed by the rest of the menagerie. "I'm tired of being a lion," she
said, wiping her flushed little face with the sleeve of her apron, and
shaking back her funny little tails of hair tied with red ribbon, that
were always bobbing forward over her shoulders.

"I've roared till my throat is sore, and I'm hungry. Isn't supper most
ready, sister?"

Joyce glanced at the clock. "It'll be ready in ten minutes," she
answered, and returned to her survey of the back yard.

"I wish that we were going to have dumplings for supper to-night," said
Holland, "and turkey and sausages. Don't you, Mary?" He snuffed hungrily
at the saucepan on the stove.

"No," said Mary, pausing thoughtfully, as if considering a weighty
matter. "I'd rather have ice cream and chocolate cake. If I had a witch
with a wand that's what I'd wish for supper to-night. Wouldn't you,