climbed down and walked slowly up the gravelled path to the house.
Cousin Kate had just come back from Tours in the pony cart, and was
waiting in the door to see if Gabriel had all the bundles that she had
brought out with her.

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

She looked at herself in Cousin Kate's mirror as she passed it, and
sighed. "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 more
becoming this way than in tight little pigtails, the way I used to
wear it."

Cousin Kate, coming up behind her, looked over her head and smiled at
the attractive reflection of Joyce's rosy cheeks and straightforward
gray 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 she
turned her head aside. Cousin Kate put her hand under the resolute
little chin, and tilted it until she could look into the eyes that
dropped under her gaze "You have been crying," she said again, this
time in English, "crying because you are homesick. I wonder if it would
not be a good occupation for you to open all the bundles that I got this
afternoon. There is a saucepan in one, and a big spoon in the other, and