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    Joyce's Holiday in France
    Joyce's Holiday in France
    Joyce's Holiday in France
    Ebook131 pages1 hour

    Joyce's Holiday in France

    By Norman Hull

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    About this ebook

    Joyce is a 12 year old girl who comes from a poor family who is taked on a year long vacation to Europe. In the fall while she is staying in southern France where she meets Jules who is a goatherd (a boy who takes care of goats). This story is about the two children and how they learn about Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations.

    This story takes place in the late 1890's and describes the American traditions of thise holidays and the French traditions of Christmas.

    This is a easy to read book written in large print and is written for the child who has started reading chapter books.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAuthorHouse
    Release dateSep 7, 2011
    ISBN9781463436926
    Joyce's Holiday in France
    Author

    Norman Hull

    Norman Hull is the author of two children's books, Joyce's Holiday in France and Robin's Big Brother. He is a retired computer systems programmer/operator where he has written operation procedure for operators and terminal operation manuals for employees. He is a long time volunteer with the American Red Cross where he was a First Aid and CPR instructor where he wrote a First Aid Manual for Manufacturing Employees back in 1980. In addition to the Red Cross he served as an Instructor, Training Coordinator and Evaluator in the U.S. Navy. Overall, he has had over 40 years of teaching. Today he lives in Michigan where he spends his time assisting students with reading difficulties in the HOST program 2nd and 3rd graders and Summer School coaching students with learning challenges. His books have fictitious characters but everything else is based on actual locations, events, conditions, clothing and morals as they were in the 1890's.

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      Book preview

      Joyce's Holiday in France - Norman Hull

      Joyce’s

      Holiday in France

      SKU-000484052_TEXT.pdf

      Norman Hull

      missing image file

      AuthorHouse™

      1663 Liberty Drive

      Bloomington, IN 47403

      www.authorhouse.com

      Phone: 1-800-839-8640

      © 2011 by Norman Hull. All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

      First published by AuthorHouse 07/21/2011

      ISBN: 978-1-4634-3694-0 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4634-3692-6 (ebk)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2011912975

      Printed in the United States of America

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

      This book is printed on acid-free paper.

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      Contents

      Chapter I

      In the Pear-Tree.

      Chapter II

      A New Fairy Tale.

      Chapter III

      Behind the Great Gate.

      Chapter IV

      A Letter and a Meeting.

      Chapter V

      A Thanksgiving Barbecue.

      Chapter VI

      Joyce Plays Ghost.

      Chapter VII

      Old Number Thirty-One.

      Chapter VIII

      Christmas Plans and an Accident.

      Chapter IX

      A Great Discovery.

      Chapter X

      Christmas.

      ILLUSTRATIONS

      JULES

      Chapter I

      WHERE JOYCE LIVED

      Chapter II

      THE PRINCESS

      Chapter III

      HE WENT OVER TO THE CASEMENT WINDOW,

      KNEELING DOWN, HE LAID HIS HEAD

      IT FELL TO THE FLOOR WITH A CRASH.

      Chapter IV

      OUT WITH MARIE

      "HE CAME TOWARDS HER WITH A

      DAZED EXPRESSION ON HIS FACE"

      Chapter V

      A LESSON IN PATRIOTISM

      BE SEATED, MADEMOISELLE, SAID THE LADY

      Chapter VI

      SHE COVERED THE TOP OF THE

      PASTEBOARD HEADWITH IT

      BROSSARD, BEWARE! BEWARE!

      Chapter VII

      THE CHILD CREPT CLOSE CHEERFUL FIRE.

      JOYCE AND SISTER DENISA

      ARE YOU ILL TODAY?

      Chapter VIII

      JULES CAME OVER, AWKARD AND SHY WITH THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF HIS NEW CLOTHES

      "SITTING UP IN BED WITH THE QUILTS

      WRAPPED AROUND HIM."

      Chapter IX

      THAT’S NUMBER THIRTY-ONE

      SHE WENT OUT OBEDIENTLY, WALKING UP AND

      DOWN THE PATHS, THE BIG WHITE CAT

      FOLLOWING HER

      Chapter X

      THE SOUND OF GABRIEL’S ACCORDEAN WENT

      ECHOING UP AND DOWN THE GARDEN AND 30

      LITTLE CHILDREN WERE MARCHING TO ITS

      MUSIC ALONG THE PATHS."

      "HE TOOK THE LITTLE FELLOW’S

      HAND IN HIS."

      image5.jpeg

      Jules

      Chapter I

      In the Pear-Tree.

      Joyce was crying, up in old Monsieur Greville’s tallest pear-tree. She had gone down to the farthest corner of the garden, out of sight of the house, for she did not want anyone to know that she was miserable enough to cry.

      She was tired of the garden with the high stone wall around it that made her feel like a prisoner; she was tired of French verbs and foreign faces; she was tired of France, and so homesick for her mother and Jack and Holland and the baby, that she couldn’t help crying. No wonder, for she was only twelve years old, and she had never been out of the Western village where she was born, until the day she started abroad with her Cousin Kate.

      Now she sat perched up on a limb in a dismal bunch, her chin in her hands and her elbows on her knees. It was a gray afternoon in November; the air was frosty, although the laurel-bushes in the garden were all in bloom.

      I expect there is snow on the ground at home, thought Joyce, "and there’s a big, cheerful fire in the sitting-room grate.

      Holland and the baby are shelling corn, and Mary is popping it. Dear me! I can smell it just as plain! Jack will be coming in from the post-office pretty soon, and maybe he will have one of my letters. Mother will read it out loud, and there they’ll all be, thinking that I am having such a fine time; that it is such a grand thing for me to be abroad studying, and having dinner served at night in so many courses, and all that sort of thing. They do not know that I am sitting up here in this pear-tree, lonesome enough to die. Oh, if I could only go back home and see them for even five minutes, she sobbed, but I can’t! I cannot! There’s a whole wide ocean between us!

      She shut her eyes, and leaned back against the tree as that desolate feeling of homesickness settled over her like a great miserable ache. Then she found that shutting her eyes and thinking very hard about the brown house at home seemed to bring it into plain sight. It was like opening a book, and seeing picture after picture as she turned the pages.

      There they were in the kitchen, washing dishes, she and Mary; and Mary was standing on a soapbox to make her tall enough to handle the dishes easily. How her funny braid of yellow hair bobbed up and down as she worked, and how her dear freckled face beamed, as they told stories to each other to make the work seem easier.

      Mary’s stories all began the same way: If I had a witch with a wand, this is what we would do. The witch with a wand had come to Joyce in the shape of Cousin Kate Ware, and that coming was one of the pictures that Joyce could see now, as she thought about it with her eyes closed.

      There was Holland swinging on the gate, waiting for her to come home from school, and trying to tell her by excited gestures, long before she was within speaking distance, that someone was in the parlor. The baby had on his best plaid kilt and new tie, and the tired mother was sitting talking in the parlor, an unusual thing for her. Joyce could see herself going up the path, swinging her sunbonnet by the strings and taking hurried bites of a big June apple in order to finish it before going into the house. Now she was sitting on the sofa beside Cousin Kate, feeling very awkward and shy with her brown fingers clasped in this stranger’s soft white hand. She had heard that Cousin Kate was a very rich old maid, who had spent years abroad, studying music and languages, and she had expected to see a stout, homely woman with bushy eyebrows, like Miss Teckla Schaum, who played the church organ, and taught German in the High School.

      But Cousin Kate was altogether unlike Miss Teckla. She was tall and slender, she was young looking and pretty, and there was a stylish air about her, from the waves of her soft golden brown hair to the bottom of her tailor-made gown that was not seen often in this Western village.

      Joyce saw herself glancing admiringly at Cousin Kate, and then pulling down her dress as far as possible, painfully conscious that her shoes were untied, and white with dust. The next picture was several days later. She and Jack were playing mumble-peg outside under the window by the lilac-bushes, and the mother was just inside the door, bending over a pile of photographs that Cousin Kate had dropped in her lap. Cousin Kate was saying, This beautiful old French villa is where I expect to spend the winter, Aunt Emily. These are views of Tours, the town that lies across the river Loire from it, and these are some of the chateaux nearby that I intend to visit. They say the purest French in the world is spoken there. I have prevailed on one of the dearest old ladies that ever lived to give me rooms with her. She and her husband live all alone in this big country place, so I shall have to provide against loneliness by taking my company with me. Will you let me have Joyce for a year?

      Jack and she stopped playing in sheer astonishment; while Cousin Kate went on to explain how many advantages she could give the girl to whom she had taken such a strong fancy.

      Looking through the lilac-bushes, Joyce could see her mother wipe her eyes and say, It seems like pure providence, Kate, and I can’t stand in the child’s way. She will have to support herself soon, and ought to be prepared for it; but she’s the oldest of the five, you know, and she has been like my right hand ever since her father died. There will not be a minute while she is gone, that I shall not miss her and wish her back. She’s the life and sunshine of the whole home.

      Then Joyce could

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