Jewel: A Chapter in Her Life Part 33

She jumped down and ran to Mrs. Forbes. "You needn't come with me, you know," she said, holding up her face. Mrs. Forbes hesitated a moment.

She had not as yet recovered from this latest liberty taken with the head of the house.

"Let me feel of your hands, Julia." She took them in hers and touched the child's cheeks and forehead as well. "You seem to feel all right, do you?"

"Yes'm."

"No soreness or pain anywhere?"

"No'm. Good-night, Mrs. Forbes."

The housekeeper stooped from her height and accepted the offered kiss.

"Do you prefer to go alone, Jewel? Isn't it lonely for you?" asked Mr.

Evringham.

"No--o, grandpa! Anna Belle is up there."

"You're not afraid of the dark then?"

Jewel looked at the speaker, uncertain of his seriousness. He seemed in earnest, however. "The dark is easy to drive away in this house," she replied. "It is so interesting, just like a treatment. The room seems full of darkness, error, and I just turn the switch," she ill.u.s.trated with thumb and finger in the air, "and suddenly--there isn't any darkness! It's all bright and happy, just like me to-day!"

"Indeed!" returned Mr. Evringham, standing with his feet apart and his arms folded. "Is that what the lady in Chicago did for you to-day?"

"Yes, grandpa," Jewel nodded eagerly. She was so glad to have him understand. "She just turned the light, Truth, right into me."

"She prayed to the Creator to cure you, you mean."

Jewel looked off. "No, not that," she answered slowly, searching for words to make her meaning plain. "G.o.d doesn't have to be begged to do anything, because He can't change, He is always the same, and always perfect, and always giving us everything good, and it's only for us--not to believe--in the things that seem to get in the way. I was believing there was something in the way, and that lady knew there wasn't, and she knew it so _well_ that the old dark fever couldn't stay. Nothing can stay that G.o.d doesn't make--not any longer than we let it cheat us."

"And she was a thousand miles away," remarked Mr. Evringham.

"Why, grandpa," returned Jewel, "there isn't any s.p.a.ce in Spirit." She gave a little sigh. "I'm real sorry you're too big to be let into the Christian Science Sunday-School."

Mrs. Forbes lips fell apart.

"One moment more, Jewel," said Mr. Evringham. "Mrs. Forbes was telling me of the gentleman who spoke to you on the trolley car yesterday."

"Oh yes," returned the child, smiling at the pleasing memory. "The Christian Scientist!"

"What makes you think he is a Christian Scientist?" asked Mr. Evringham.

"I know he was. He had on the pin." Jewel showed the one she wore, and her grandfather examined the little cross and crown curiously.

"I wonder if it's possible," he soliloquized aloud.

"Oh yes, grandpa, he is one, and if he's a friend of yours he can explain to you so much better than a little girl can."

After the child had left the room Mr. Evringham and his housekeeper stood regarding one another. His usually unsmiling countenance was relaxed. Mrs. Forbes observed his novel expression, but did not suspect that the light twinkling in his deep-set eyes was partly due to the sight of her own pent-up emotion.

He hooked one thumb in his vest and balanced his eyegla.s.ses in his other hand.

"Well, what do you think of her?" he inquired.

"I think, sir," returned the housekeeper emphatically, "that if anybody bought that child for a fool he wouldn't get his money's worth."

"Even though she is a Scientist?" added Mr. Evringham, his mustache curving in a smile.

"She's too smart for me. I don't like children to be so smart. The idea of her setting up to teach you Mr. Evringham!"

"That shouldn't be so surprising. I read a long time ago something about certain things being concealed from the wise and prudent and revealed unto babes."

"Babes!" repeated Mrs. Forbes. "We've been the babes. If that young one can lie in bed with a fever, and wind every one of us around her finger the way she's done to-day, what can we expect when she's up and around?"

The broker laughed. "She's an Evringham, an Evringham!" he said.

"You may laugh, sir, but what do you think of her wheedling me into sending Zeke up, and then getting him off on the sly with that telegram?

I faced him down with it to-night, and Zeke isn't any good at fibbing."

"I'll be hanged if I don't think it was a pretty good thing for me,"

rejoined Mr. Evringham, "and money in my pocket. It looked as if I was in for Ballard for a matter of weeks."

"But the--the--the audacity of it!" protested Mrs. Forbes. "What do you think she said after you and Dr. Ballard had done downstairs? I tried to bring her to a sense of what she'd done, and all she answered was that she had known that G.o.d would deliver her out of the snare of the fowler.

Now I should like to ask you, Mr. Evringham," added Mrs. Forbes in an access of outraged virtue, "which of us three do you think she called the fowler?"

"Give it up, I'm sure," returned the broker; "but I can imagine that we seemed three pretty determined giants for one small girl to outwit."

"She'd outwit a regiment, sir; and I don't see how you can permit it."

Mr. Evringham endeavored to compose his countenance. "We must allow her religious liberty, I suppose, Mrs. Forbes. It's a matter of religion with her--that is, we must allow it as long as she keeps well. If Ballard had found her worse to-night, I a.s.sure you I should have consigned all Christian Scientists to the bottom of the sea, and that little zealot would have taken her medicine from my own hand. All's well that ends well, eh?"

Mrs. Forbes had caught sight of the incongruous adornment of her employer's desk.

With majestic strides she advanced upon the yellow chicken and swept it into her ap.r.o.n. "Julia must be taught not to litter your room, sir."

"I beg your pardon," returned the broker firmly, also advancing and holding out his hand. "That is my chicken."

Slowly Mrs. Forbes restored the confiscated property, and Mr. Evringham examined it carefully to see that it was intact, and then set it carefully on his desk.

Mrs. Forbes recalled the confectioner's window. "She must have bought that chicken when my back was turned!" she thought. "That young one could have given points to Napoleon."

CHAPTER XV

A RAINY MORNING

The next morning it rained so heavily that Mr. Evringham was obliged to forego his ride. Wet weather was an unmixed ill to him. It not only made riding and golf miserable, but it reminded him that rheumatism was getting a grip on one of his shoulders.

"It is disgusting, perfectly disgusting to grow old," he muttered as he descended the broad staircase. On the lower landing Jewel rose up out of the dusk, where she had been sitting near the beautiful clock. Her bright little face shone up at him like a sunbeam.