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.