so. She told Betty that night that she was afraid to go through the gate.
She remembered that in the story where the old king and the brothers of
Ethelried came riding up to the portal 'the scissors leaped from their
place and snapped so angrily in their faces that they turned and fled.
Only those who belong to the kingdom of loving hearts could enter in.' She
told Betty that she knew she didn't belong to that kingdom, for nobody
loved her, and often she didn't love anybody for days. She was afraid to
go through the gate for fear the scissors would leap down at her, and she
would be so ashamed to be driven back before us all. So she thought she
would pretend that she didn't want to go in. She had believed every word
of that fairy tale.

"We had a beautiful time in the garden. We went down all the winding paths
between the high laurel hedges where you used to walk, and almost got
lost, they had so many unexpected twists and turns. The old statues of
Adam and Eve, grinning at each other across the fountain, are so funny. We
saw the salad beds with the great glass bells over them, and we climbed
into the pear-tree and sat looking over the wall, wondering how you could
have been homesick in such an interesting place.

"Berthe served tea in the pagoda, and because we asked about Gabriel's
music, Madame smiled and sent Berthe away with a message. Pretty soon we
heard his old accordeon playing away, out of sight in the coach-house, and
then we knew what kind of music you had at the Noel fete. Sort of wheezy,
wasn't it? Still it sounded sweet, too, at that distance.

"We took Hero with us, and he was really the guest of honour at the party.
When Madame saw the Red Cross on his collar and heard his history, she
couldn't do enough for him. She fed him cakes until I thought he surely
would be ill. It was a Red Cross nurse who wrote to Madame about her
husband. He was wounded in the Franco-Prussian war, too, just as was the
Major. Madame went on to get him and bring him home, and she says she
never can forget the kindness that was shown to her by every one whom she
met when she crossed the lines under the protection of the Red Cross.

"She had met Clara Barton, too, and while we were talking about the good
she has done, Madame said, 'The Duchess of Baden may have sent her the
Gold Cross of Remembrance, but the grateful hearts of many a French wife
and mother will for ever hold the rosary of her beautiful deeds!' Wasn't
that a l