of the pony cart, the day we had our Thanksgiving barbecue in the garden.  I fairly ache to be with you.  Please write me a good long letter and tell me what you are doing; and whenever you hear the nightingales in Madame’s garden, and the cathedral bells tolling out across the Loire, think of your loving JOYCE.”

“Let’s do those things to-morrow,” exclaimed Lloyd, as she folded the letter and slipped it back into its envelope.  “I don’t want to waste time on any old chateaux with the Gate of the Giant Scissors just across the river, that we haven’t seen yet.”

“I have heard about that gate ever since we left America,” said Mr. Forbes, laughingly.  “Nobody has taken the trouble to inform me why it is so important, or why it was selected for a meeting-place.  Somebody owes me an explanation.”

“It’s only an old gate with a mammoth pair of scissors swung on a medallion above it,” said Mr. Sherman.  “They were put there by a half-crazy old man who built the place, by the name of Ciseaux.  Joyce Ware spent a winter in sight of it, and she came back with some wonderful tale about the scissors being the property of a prince who went around doing all sorts of impossible things with them.  I believe the girls have actually come to think that the scissors are enchanted.”

“Oh, Papa Jack, stop teasin’!” said the Little Colonel.  “You know we don’t!”

“If it is really settled that we are to go there to-morrow, I want to hear the story,” said Cousin Carl.  “I make a practice of reading the history of a place before I visit it, so I’ll have to know the story of the gate in order to take a proper interest in it.”

“Come into the parlour,” said Mrs. Sherman rising.  “Betty will tell us.”

As she turned, she saw Fidelia looking after the girls with wistful eyes, and she read the longing and loneliness in her face.

“Wouldn’t you like to come too, and hear the fairy tale with us?” she asked, kindly holding out her hand.

A look of happy surprise came over Fidelia’s face, and before she could stammer out her acceptance of the unlooked-for invitation, Mrs. Sherman drew her toward her and led her into the little circle in one corner of the parlour.

“Now, we are ready, Tusitala,” said Mrs. Sherman, settling herself on the sofa, with Fidelia beside her.  Shaking back her brown curls, Betty began the fairy tale that Joyce’s Cousin Kate had told one bleak November day, to make the homesick child forget that she was “a stranger in a strange land.”

“Once upon a time, in a far island of the sea, there lived a king with seven sons.”

Word for word as she had heard it, Betty told the adventures of the princes ("the three that were dark and the three that were fair"), and then of the middle son, Prince Ethelried, to whom the old king gave no portion of his kingdom.  With no sword, nothing but the scissors of the Court Tailor, he had been sent out into the world to make his fortune.  Even Cousin Carl listened with close attention to the prince’s adventures with the Ogre, in which he was victorious, because the grateful fairy whom he had rescued laid on the scissors a magic spell.