IN THE PEAR-TREE.

Joyce was crying, up in old Monsieur Gréville's tallest pear-tree. She
had gone down to the farthest corner of the garden, out of sight of the
house, for she did not want any one to know that she was miserable
enough to cry.

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

Now she sat perched up on a limb in a dismal bunch, her chin in her
hands 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 all
in bloom.

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

"Holland and the baby are shelling corn, and Mary is popping it. Dear
me! I can smell it just as plain! Jack will be coming in from the
post-office pretty soon, and maybe he'll have one of my letters. Mother
will read it out loud, and there they'll all be, thinking that I am
having such a fine time; that it is such a grand thing for me to be
abroad studying, and having dinner served at night in so many courses,