Jules dug the little trench according to Joyce’s directions, and laid the iron grating which she had borrowed from the cook across it, and built the fire underneath.  “We ought to have something especially patriotic and Thanksgivingey,” said Joyce, standing on one foot to consider.  “Oh, now I know,” she cried, after a moment’s thought.  “Cousin Kate has a lovely big silk flag in the top of her trunk.  I’ll run and get that, and then I’ll recite the ‘Landing of the Pilgrims’ to you while the rabbit cooks.”

Presently a savory odor began to steal along the winding paths of the garden, between the laurel-bushes,—­a smell of barbecued meat sputtering over the fire.  Above the door of the little kiosk, with many a soft swish of silken stirrings, hung the beautiful old flag.  Then a clear little voice floated up through the pine-trees: 

     “My country, ’tis of thee,
     Sweet land of liberty,
     Of thee I sing!”

All the time that Joyce sang, she was moving around the table, setting out the plates and rattling cups and saucers.  She could not keep a little quaver out of her voice, for, as she went on, all the scenes of all the times that she had sung that song before came crowding up in her memory.  There were the Thanksgiving days in the church at home, and the Washington’s birthdays at school, and two Decoration days, when, as a granddaughter of a veteran, she had helped scatter flowers over the soldiers’ graves.

Somehow it made her feel so hopelessly far away from all that made life dear to be singing of that “sweet land of liberty” in a foreign country, with only poor little alien Jules for company.

Maybe that is why the boy’s first lesson in patriotism was given so earnestly by his homesick little teacher.  Something that could not be put into words stirred within him, as, looking up at the soft silken flutterings of the old flag, he listened for the first time to the story of the Pilgrim Fathers.

The rabbit cooked slowly, so slowly that there was time for Jules to learn how to play mumble-peg while they waited.  At last it was done, and Joyce proudly plumped it into the platter that had been waiting for it.  Marie had already brought out a bountiful lunch, cold meats and salad and a dainty pudding.  By the time that Joyce had added her contribution to the feast, there was scarcely an inch of the table left uncovered.  Jules did not know the names of half the dishes.

Not many miles away from that old garden, scattered up and down the Loire throughout all the region of fair Tourraine, rise the turrets of many an old chateau.  Great banquet halls, where kings and queens once feasted, still stand as silent witnesses of a gay bygone court life; but never in any chateau or palace among them all was feast more thoroughly enjoyed than this impromptu dinner in the garden, where a little goatherd was the only guest.

It was an enchanted spot to Jules, made so by the magic of Joyce’s wonderful gift of story-telling.  For the first time in his life that he could remember, he heard of Santa Claus and Christmas trees, of Bluebeard and Aladdin’s lamp, and all the dear old fairy tales that were so entrancing he almost forgot to eat.