If Gabriel’s eyes could have followed her around that bend in the road, he would have seen a sight past his understanding:  Mademoiselle Joyce running at the top of her speed to meet a little goatherd in wooden shoes and blue cotton blouse,—­a common little peasant goatherd.

“It’s Thanksgiving Day.  Jules,” she announced, gasping, as she sank down on the ground beside him.  “We’re the only Americans here, and everybody has gone off; and Cousin Kate said to celebrate in some way.  I’m going to have a dinner in the garden.  I’ve bought a rabbit, and we’ll dig a hole, and make a fire, and barbecue it the way Jack and I used to do at home.  And we’ll roast eggs in the ashes, and have a fine time.  I’ve got a lemon tart and a little iced fruit-cake, too.”

All this was poured out in such breathless haste, and in such a confusion of tongues, first a sentence of English and then a word of French, that it is no wonder that Jules grew bewildered in trying to follow her.  She had to begin again at the beginning, and speak very slowly, in order to make him understand that it was a feast day of some kind, and that he, Jules, was invited to some sort of a strange, wonderful entertainment in Monsieur Greville’s garden.  “But Brossard is away from home,” said Jules, “and there is no one to watch the goats, and keep them from straying down the road.  Still it would be just the same if he were home,” he added, sadly.  “He would not let me go, I am sure.  I have never been out of sight of that roof since I first came here, except on errands to the village, when I had to run all the way back.”  He pointed to the peaked gables, adorned by the scissors of his crazy old ancestor.

“Brossard isn’t your father,” cried Joyce, indignantly, “nor your uncle, nor your cousin, nor anything else that has a right to shut you up that way.  Isn’t there a field with a fence all around it, that you could drive the goats into for a few hours?”

Jules shook his head.

“Well, I can’t have my Thanksgiving spoiled for just a couple of old goats,” exclaimed Joyce.  “You’ll have to bring them along, and we’ll shut them up in the carriage-house.  You come over in about an hour, and I’ll be at the side gate waiting for you.”

Joyce had always been a general in her small way.  She made her plans and issued her orders both at home and at school, and the children accepted her leadership as a matter of course.  Even if Jules had not been willing and anxious to go, it is doubtful if he could have mustered courage to oppose the arrangements that she made in such a masterful way; but Jules had not the slightest wish to object to anything whatsoever that Joyce might propose.

It is safe to say that the old garden had never before even dreamed of such a celebration as the one that took place that afternoon behind its moss-coated walls.  The time-stained statue of Eve, which stood on one side of the fountain, looked across at the weather-beaten figure of Adam, on the other side, in stony-eyed surprise.  The little marble satyr in the middle of the fountain, which had been grinning ever since its endless shower-bath began, seemed to grin wider than ever, as it watched the children’s strange sport.