All that next morning, too, the day before Christmas, it seemed to Joyce as if something unusual were afloat.

Everybody in the house was acting strangely.
Madame and Cousin Kate did not come home to lunch.

She had been told that she must not go to see Jules until afternoon, and the doors of the room where the Christmas tree was kept had all been carefully locked.
She thought that the morning never would pass.

It was nearly three o'clock when she started over to see Jules.

To her great surprise, as she ran lightly up the stairs to his room, she saw her Cousin Kate hurrying across the upper hall, with a pile of rose-colored silk curtains in her arms.
Jules tried to raise himself up in bed as Joyce entered, forgetting all about his broken leg in his eagerness to tell the news.