The Gate of the Giant Scissors Read online

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  THE GIANT SCISSORS

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER

  I. IN THE PEAR-TREE. II. A NEW FAIRY TALE. III. BEHIND THE GREAT GATE. IV. A LETTER AND A MEETING. V. A THANKSGIVING BARBECUE. VI. JOYCE PLAYS GHOST. VII. OLD "NUMBER THIRTY-ONE".VIII. CHRISTMAS PLANS AND AN ACCIDENT. IX. A GREAT DISCOVERY. X. CHRISTMAS.

  JULES]

  THE GATE OF THE GIANTSCISSORS.

  CHAPTER I.

  IN THE PEAR-TREE.

  Joyce was crying, up in old Monsieur Greville's tallest pear-tree. Shehad gone down to the farthest corner of the garden, out of sight of thehouse, for she did not want any one to know that she was miserableenough to cry.

  She was tired of the garden with the high stone wall around it, thatmade her feel like a prisoner; she was tired of French verbs and foreignfaces; she was tired of France, and so homesick for her mother and Jackand Holland and the baby, that she couldn't help crying. No wonder, forshe was only twelve years old, and she had never been out of the littleWestern village where she was born, until the day she started abroadwith her Cousin Kate.

  Now she sat perched up on a limb in a dismal bunch, her chin in herhands and her elbows on her knees. It was a gray afternoon in November;the air was frosty, although the laurel-bushes in the garden were allin bloom.

  "I s'pect there is snow on the ground at home," thought Joyce, "andthere's a big, cheerful fire in the sitting-room grate.

  "Holland and the baby are shelling corn, and Mary is popping it. Dearme! I can smell it just as plain! Jack will be coming in from thepost-office pretty soon, and maybe he'll have one of my letters. Motherwill read it out loud, and there they'll all be, thinking that I amhaving such a fine time; that it is such a grand thing for me to beabroad studying, and having dinner served at night in so many courses,and all that sort of thing. They don't know that I am sitting up here inthis pear-tree, lonesome enough to die. Oh, if I could only go back homeand see them for even five minutes," she sobbed, "but I can't! I can't!There's a whole wide ocean between us!"

  She shut her eyes, and leaned back against the tree as that desolatefeeling of homesickness settled over her like a great miserable ache.Then she found that shutting her eyes, and thinking very hard about thelittle brown house at home, seemed to bring it into plain sight. It waslike opening a book, and seeing picture after picture as she turnedthe pages.

  There they were in the kitchen, washing dishes, she and Mary; and Marywas standing on a soap-box to make her tall enough to handle the disheseasily. How her funny little braid of yellow hair bobbed up and down asshe worked, and how her dear little freckled face beamed, as they toldstories to each other to make the work seem easier.

  Mary's stories all began the same way: "If I had a witch with a wand,this is what we would do." The witch with a wand had come to Joyce inthe shape of Cousin Kate Ware, and that coming was one of the picturesthat Joyce could see now, as she thought about it with her eyes closed.

  There was Holland swinging on the gate, waiting for her to come homefrom school, and trying to tell her by excited gestures, long before shewas within speaking distance, that some one was in the parlor. The babyhad on his best plaid kilt and new tie, and the tired little mother wassitting talking in the parlor, an unusual thing for her. Joyce could seeherself going up the path, swinging her sun-bonnet by the strings andtaking hurried little bites of a big June apple in order to finish itbefore going into the house. Now she was sitting on the sofa besideCousin Kate, feeling very awkward and shy with her little brown fingersclasped in this stranger's soft white hand. She had heard that CousinKate was a very rich old maid, who had spent years abroad, studyingmusic and languages, and she had expected to see a stout, homely womanwith bushy eyebrows, like Miss Teckla Schaum, who played the churchorgan, and taught German in the High School.

  But Cousin Kate was altogether unlike Miss Teckla. She was tall andslender, she was young-looking and pretty, and there was a stylish airabout her, from the waves of her soft golden brown hair to the bottom ofher tailor-made gown, that was not often seen in this littleWestern village.

  Joyce saw herself glancing admiringly at Cousin Kate, and then pullingdown her dress as far as possible, painfully conscious that her shoeswere untied, and white with dust. The next picture was several dayslater. She and Jack were playing mumble-peg outside under the window bythe lilac-bushes, and the little mother was just inside the door,bending over a pile of photographs that Cousin Kate had dropped in herlap. Cousin Kate was saying, "This beautiful old French villa is where Iexpect to spend the winter, Aunt Emily. These are views of Tours, thetown that lies across the river Loire from it, and these are some of thechateaux near by that I intend to visit. They say the purest French inthe world is spoken there. I have prevailed on one of the dearest oldladies that ever lived to give me rooms with her. She and her husbandlive all alone in this big country place, so I shall have to provideagainst loneliness by taking my company with me. Will you let me haveJoyce for a year?"

  Jack and she stopped playing in sheer astonishment, while Cousin Katewent on to explain how many advantages she could give the little girl towhom she had taken such a strong fancy.

  Looking through the lilac-bushes, Joyce could see her mother wipe hereyes and say, "It seems like pure providence, Kate, and I can't stand inthe child's way. She'll have to support herself soon, and ought to beprepared for it; but she's the oldest of the five, you know, and she hasbeen like my right hand ever since her father died. There'll not be aminute while she is gone, that I shall not miss her and wish her back.She's the life and sunshine of the whole home."

  Then Joyce could see the little brown house turned all topsy-turvy inthe whirl of preparation that followed, and the next thing, she wasstanding on the platform at the station, with her new steamer trunkbeside her. Half the town was there to bid her good-by. In theexcitement of finding herself a person of such importance she forgot howmuch she was leaving behind her, until looking up, she saw a tender,wistful smile on her mother's face, sadder than any tears.

  WHERE JOYCE LIVED]

  Luckily the locomotive whistled just then, and the novelty of gettingaboard a train for the first time, helped her to be brave at theparting. She stood on the rear platform of the last car, waving herhandkerchief to the group at the station as long as it was in sight, sothat the last glimpse her mother should have of her, was with her brightlittle face all ashine.

  All these pictures passed so rapidly through Joyce's mind, that she hadretraced the experiences of the last three months in as many minutes.Then, somehow, she felt better. The tears had washed away the ache inher throat. She wiped her eyes and climbed liked a squirrel to thehighest limb that could bear her weight.

  This was not the first time that the old pear-tree had been shaken byJoyce's grief, and it knew that her spells of homesickness always endedin this way. There she sat, swinging her plump legs back and forth, herlong light hair blowing over the shoulders of her blue jacket, and hersaucy little mouth puckered into a soft whistle. She could see over thehigh wall now. The sun was going down behind the tall Lombardy poplarsthat lined the road, and in a distant field two peasants still at workreminded her of the picture of "The Angelus." They seemed likeacquaintances on account of the resemblance, for there was a copy of thepicture in her little bedroom at home.

  All around her stretched quiet fields, sloping down to the ancientvillage of St. Symphorien and the river Loire. Just across the river, sonear that she could hear the ringing of the cathedral bell, lay thefamous old town of Tours. There was something in these country sightsand sounds that soothed her with their homely cheerfulness. The
crowingof a rooster and the barking of a dog fell on her ear likefamiliar music.

  "It's a comfort to hear something speak English," she sighed, "even ifit's nothing but a chicken. I do wish that Cousin Kate wouldn't be soparticular about my using French all day long. The one little half-hourat bedtime when she allows me to speak English isn't a drop in thebucket. It's a mercy that I had studied French some before I came, or Iwould have a lonesome time. I wouldn't be able to ever talk at all."

  It was getting cold up in the pear-tree. Joyce shivered and stepped downto the limb below, but paused in her descent to watch a peddler goingdown the road with a pack on his back.

  "Oh, he is stopping at the gate with the big scissors!" she cried, sointerested that she spoke aloud. "I must wait to see if it opens."

  There was something mysterious about that gate across the road. LikeMonsieur Greville's, it was plain and solid, reaching as high as thewall. Only the lime-trees and the second story windows of the housecould be seen above it. On the top it bore an iron medallion, on whichwas fastened a huge pair of scissors. There was a smaller pair on eachgable of the house, also.

  During the three months that Joyce had been in Monsieur Greville'shome, she had watched every day to see it open; but if any one everentered or left the place, it was certainly by some other way than thisqueer gate.

  What lay beyond it, no one could tell. She had questioned Gabriel thecoachman, and Berthe the maid, in vain. Madame Greville said that sheremembered having heard, when a child, that the man who built it wasnamed _Ciseaux_, and that was why the symbol of this name was hung overthe gate and on the gables. He had been regarded as half crazy by hisneighbors. The place was still owned by a descendant of his, who hadgone to Algiers, and left it in charge of two servants.

  The peddler rang the bell of the gate several times, but failing toarouse any one, shouldered his pack and went off grumbling. Then Joyceclimbed down and walked slowly up the gravelled path to the house.Cousin Kate had just come back from Tours in the pony cart, and waswaiting in the door to see if Gabriel had all the bundles that she hadbrought out with her.

  Joyce followed her admiringly into the house. She wished that she couldgrow up to look exactly like Cousin Kate, and wondered if she wouldever wear such stylish silk-lined skirts, and catch them up in such anairy, graceful way when she ran up-stairs; and if she would ever have aParis hat with long black feathers, and always wear a bunch of sweetviolets on her coat.

  She looked at herself in Cousin Kate's mirror as she passed it, andsighed. "Well, I am better-looking than when I left home," she thought."That's one comfort. My face isn't freckled now, and my hair is morebecoming this way than in tight little pigtails, the way I used towear it."

  Cousin Kate, coming up behind her, looked over her head and smiled atthe attractive reflection of Joyce's rosy cheeks and straightforwardgray eyes. Then she stopped suddenly and put her arms around her,saying, "What's the matter, dear? You have been crying."

  "Nothing," answered Joyce, but there was a quaver in her voice, and sheturned her head aside. Cousin Kate put her hand under the resolutelittle chin, and tilted it until she could look into the eyes thatdropped under her gaze "You have been crying," she said again, thistime in English, "crying because you are homesick. I wonder if it wouldnot be a good occupation for you to open all the bundles that I got thisafternoon. There is a saucepan in one, and a big spoon in the other, andall sorts of good things in the others, so that we can make somemolasses candy here in my room, over the open fire. While it cooks youcan curl up in the big armchair and listen to a fairy tale in thefirelight. Would you like that, little one?"

  "Oh, yes!" cried Joyce, ecstatically. "That's what they are doing athome this minute, I am sure. We always make candy every afternoon in thewinter time."

  Presently the saucepan was sitting on the coals, and Joyce's little pugnose was rapturously sniffing the odor of bubbling molasses. "I knowwhat I'd like the story to be about," she said, as she stirred thedelicious mixture with the new spoon. "Make up something about the biggate across the road, with the scissors on it."

  Cousin Kate crossed the room, and sat down by the window, where shecould look out and see the top of it.

  "Let me think for a few minutes," she said. "I have been very muchinterested in that old gate myself."

  She thought so long that the candy was done before she was ready to tellthe story; but while it cooled in plates outside on the window-sill, shedrew Joyce to a seat beside her in the chimney-corner. With her feet onthe fender, and the child's head on her shoulder, she began this story,and the firelight dancing on the walls, showed a smile on Joyce'scontented little face.