told Jules's uncle, when
he came back, how cruelly the poor little thing had been treated.

"Then the little prince really did come into his kingdom, for all sorts of
lovely things happened after that. The gate had been closed for years on
account of a terrible quarrel in the Ciseaux family, but at last something
Joyce did helped to make it up. The gate swung open, and the old
white-haired brother and sister went back to the home of their childhood
together, and it was Christmas Day in the morning. They had been kept from
going through the gate all those years, because the Giant Scissors
wouldn't let them pass. Only those who belong to the kingdom of loving
hearts can enter in."

"Some day you must put that all in a book, Betty," said Cousin Carl, when
she had finished. "When we go to see the gate, I'll take my camera, and
we'll get a picture of it. Now I feel that I can properly appreciate it,
having heard its wonderful history."

There was a teasing light in his eyes that made Lloyd say, "Now you're
laughin' at us, Cousin Carl, but it doesn't make any difference. I'd
rathah see that gate than any old chateau in France."

CHAPTER IX.

AT THE GATE OF THE GIANT SCISSORS

Each of the girls answered Joyce's letter, but the Little Colonel's was
the first to find its way to the little brown house in Plainsville,
Kansas.

"Dear Joyce," she wrote. "We were all dreadfully disappointed yesterday
morning when mother and Papa Jack came back from Madame's villa, and told
us that she could not let us stay there. She has some English people in
the house, and could not give us rooms even for one night. She said that
we must be disappointed also about seeing Jules, for his Uncle Martin has
taken him to Paris to stay a month. I could have cried, I was so sorry.

"Ever since we left home I have been planning what we should do when we
reached the Gate of the Giant Scissors. I wanted to do all the things that
you did, as far as possible. I was going to have a barbecue for Jules,
down in the garden by the pagoda, and to have some kind of a midsummer
fete for the peasant children who came to your Christmas tree.

"Madame was sorry, too, that she couldn't take us, when she found that we
were your friends, and she asked mother to bring us all out the next day
and have tea in the pagoda. As soon as mother and Papa Jack came back,
they took us to see Sister Denisa at the home of the Little Sisters of the
Poor. I wish you could