Jewel: A Chapter in Her Life Part 37

"Yes--because--because--" Jewel looked off. She knew that it was error, but it was hard to explain why to the lovely grown-up cousin who was so strangely sorry. "Well, you see," she added after the moment's thought, "it isn't having faith in G.o.d, it isn't knowing that you're His child, and that He takes care of you."

"No, I suppose not; but I have never learned how to know that, Jewel."

"I know you haven't," returned the little girl, and she slipped her hand toward her cousin's. The girl met it halfway and held it close. "Since I've seen you," Jewel went on slowly, "I know that prettiness isn't enough to make a person happy--nor all your lovely clothes--nor having people fond of you and sending you presents--nor making the sweetest music; but you can be happy, cousin Eloise, unless you're doing wrong."

"I am doing wrong, but I can't help it." The girl took her supporting hand from the doll and pressed it to her eyes a second before dropping it. "What were you doing when I came in?"

"I was just going to get the lesson."

"Oh, do you go on with your studies? Perhaps I can help you better than Anna Belle."

"Would you cousin Eloise?" Jewel flushed with pleasure. "Some of the words are so long. I thought I'd ask grandpa to-night."

"Why didn't you wish to come to me?" questioned Eloise, well knowing why.

The little girl looked a trifle embarra.s.sed. "I didn't want to trouble you. Of course you aren't my real relations," she said modestly.

"Do you remember that, too!" exclaimed Eloise.

Jewel started at the hurt voice. "Would you like to be?" she asked earnestly. "I wish you were, because"--she hesitated and smiled with her head a little on the side, "because I might look more like you."

The gravity of Eloise's lips remained unbroken. "I want you to promise me something, Jewel. I want you to promise not to tell your grandfather that I have been with you to-day."

"Why? He'd be glad I was happy."

"I have a reason. I will help you with your studies every day if you won't tell him."

"I might without meaning to," rejoined the child, her alert little mind busy with the new problem suddenly presented to it.

"I will make a rainbow scarf for Anna Belle if you will never speak of me to your grandfather."

"Why do you say my grandfather? He's yours, too."

"Not at all. Didn't you just say I was not your real relation?"

"Oh but, cousin Eloise," Jewel was sure of the hurt now, though the why or wherefore was a mystery, "of course he wishes you were."

"Oh no he doesn't." The answer came quick and sharp, and the child reviewed mentally her own observations of the household. Her heart swelled with the desire to help.

"Now, cousin Eloise," her breath came a little faster with the thronging thoughts for which her vocabulary was insufficient, "error does try to cheat people so. Just think how kind you were inside all the time, though you wouldn't smile at me. You're willing to make Anna Belle a scarf. I called you the enchanted maiden, because you were too sorry to try to make people happy, and now grandpa's just like that; he's enchanted, too, if he doesn't make you happy, because he's just as _kind_ inside, oh, just as _kind_ as he can be."

"He likes you," returned Eloise.

Jewel regarded her for a silent moment. "I noticed when I came," she said at last, apologetically, "that n.o.body here seemed to love one another; and the house was so grand and the people were so beautiful that I couldn't understand; and I called it Castle Discord."

Eloise gave a little exclamation. "I call it the icebox," she returned.

Jewel's face lighted. "That's it, that's all it is," she said eagerly.

"It's easy to melt ice. Love melts everything."

"It's pretty slow work sometimes," said Eloise.

"Then you have to put on more love. That's all. Have you"--the child asked the question a little timidly, "have you put on much love to grandpa?"

"Why should I love him?" asked Eloise. "He doesn't love me."

"Oh dear," said Jewel. After a minute's thought her face brightened. "I guess I'll show you my dotted letter."

She ran to the closet where hung her dotted challie dress and took from the pocket the message that had come to her the evening of her arrival.

"My mother put a letter into all my pockets for a happy surprise; and this one came the first night, when I was feeling all sorry and alone, and it comforted me. Perhaps it will comfort you."

She put the paper into the girl's hand, and Eloise read it. She turned it over and read it a second time.

Jewel stood beside her chair watching, and seeing that her cousin seemed interested, she ran and brought her little wrapper. "Perhaps you'd like to see this one too," she said feeling in the pocket for the second message.

Eloise accepted and read it. Every word of the two notes came to the mind of the young girl as suggestions from another planet, so foreign were they to any instruction or advice that had ever fallen to her lot.

She gave a slight exclamation as she finished. "Is your mother a saint?"

she asked, looking up suddenly.

"No," returned Jewel innocently. "She's a Christian Scientist."

Eloise suddenly put out her hand, and drawing Jewel to her, hid her forehead on the child's breast.

"I wish you were older," she said.

Jewel put her little hands on the s.h.i.+ning waves of hair she had admired from afar. "I wish my mother was here," she answered. "Did you like those things mother said?"

"Oh yes; but they're from heaven, and I'm in the other place," replied Eloise disconsolately.

"Then let's look in another pocket!" exclaimed Jewel. "I'll look in my best dress. Perhaps she'd put the best one there."

The girl lifted her head, and the child went eagerly to the closet, coming back with a folded paper. "We'll read it together. You read it out loud, and I'll look over your shoulder."

The rain slanted against the window in gusts as the two heads bent above the paper. Eloise read:--

"Mother is thinking of you, little daughter, every day and every night, and the thing she hopes the most is, that you never let the day go by without studying the lesson. The words may be hard sometimes, but perhaps some one will read it with you, and if they do not, then you go on trying your best, and you will learn more and more all the time; for truth will s.h.i.+ne into your thought and help you. Grandpa will give you plenty of bread and b.u.t.ter, but you must remember that Spirit, not matter, satisfieth. You would starve without the Bible and the text-book, and very soon the joy would go out of everything. Give my love to Anna Belle, and tell her not to go out to play any day until you have read the lesson."

"Your mother speaks as if you learned Christian Science out of the Bible," said Eloise.

"Of course," returned Jewel.

"I thought a woman got it up," said the girl. "I thought your church wors.h.i.+pped her."

The child smiled at the phrase. "You know Christ was the first one.

That's why we call ourselves that. We couldn't be Christian Scientists if we wors.h.i.+pped any one but G.o.d," she answered. "Of course we love Mrs.

Eddy. Just think how good and unselfish a person has to be before they can hear G.o.d's teaching. He showed her how to remind people of the things that Christ taught, and how to get rid of their sins and sickness. We love her dearly for helping people so much, and shouldn't you think everybody would? But they don't. Some people think hating thoughts about her, just as if she was teaching bad things instead of good ones. Mother says it reminds her of what the Saviour said, 'For which of these works do ye stone me?'"

"Ah, but you see," returned Eloise, "Christian Scientists let people die sometimes without a doctor."