Jewel: A Chapter in Her Life Part 42

"Dr. Busby'll leave anything when he knows it's the Maid." He didn't need to say "hurry." Zeke was as anxious as his master to get the veterinary surgeon.

Ess.e.x Maid had fallen in her stall and was making her misery apparent, tossing her head and rolling her eyes. Her master's teeth were set.

"Grandpa, may I try to help?" came Jewel's eager voice.

"Go away, child," sternly. "You'll get hurt."

"But may I treat her?"

"Do anything," brusquely; "but don't come near."

Jewel ran to the back of the barn, dropped on the floor, and buried her face in her hands.

Five minutes pa.s.sed, ten, fifteen. Zeke rode up to the barn door, white and wild-eyed in the twilight.

"Dr. Busby was away!" he gasped. "They tried to get him on the telephone, and at last did. He'll be here in a few minutes."

"The Maid's better," said Mr. Evringham, wiping his forehead. "There hasn't been a repet.i.tion of the attack." Mrs. Forbes stood by, fanning herself with her ap.r.o.n. The mare was standing quietly.

"Great Scott, but I'm glad!" replied Zeke devoutly. "I've seen 'em keel up with that. You can go through me with a fine tooth comb, Mr.

Evringham, and you won't find a thing I've neglected for that mare."

Excitement had placed the young fellow beyond his awe for the master.

"I believe you, boy," returned the broker. In his relief he would have believed anything.

"See the poor kid," said Zeke, catching sight of the little figure sitting out of earshot, where the twilight touched her.

Mr. Evringham wheeled and strode back to the child. Her face was still hidden.

"Don't cry, Jewel," he said kindly, his voice unsteady. "She's better."

The child looked up radiantly. "I knew it!"

The unexpected look and exclamation startled her grandfather. "Zeke says the doctor can't get here for a little while," he went on, "but the mare is out of pain."

"It's all right," rejoined the child joyously. "The doctor ought not to come. We shall do better without him."

The first gleam of her meaning began to s.h.i.+ne across the broker's mind.

He stared down at the little figure, uncertain whether to laugh or cry, sufficiently shaken to do either.

"Why, you midget you," he said, picking the child up in his arms; "have you been trying your tricks over here in the corner?"

"That isn't the way to talk, grandpa, when G.o.d has helped us so,"

returned Jewel earnestly.

Zeke, following his employer, had heard this colloquy, and stared open mouthed.

When Dr. Busby arrived he was a much injured man. "The mare's perfectly fit," he grumbled. "You've made me leave an important case."

"Very sorry," returned Mr. Evringham, trying to look so. "The fact is the Maid has given us a scare in the last hour that I shouldn't like repeated. Look her over carefully, Busby, carefully."

"I have." The veterinary gave a cross look around the group, his glance resting a moment on the upturned face of a little flaxen-haired girl who stood with her hand in Mr. Evringham's.

"He's falling into his dotage, I guess," said the doctor privately to Zeke, as he prepared to ride away.

"Don't fool yourself," returned the young fellow. "The mare pretty near scared me into a fit. My knees ain't real steady yet."

He stood watching the disappearing figure of the veterinary. "That kid believes praying did it," he mused. "I ain't going to believe that, of course, but the whole thing was the queerest ever."

Mr. Evringham, after one more visit to the stall of Ess.e.x Maid, started back to the house, Jewel skipping beside him.

Mrs. Forbes remained in the barn, one hand still pressed to her ample bosom, a teakettle in the other.

"What'd you calc'late to do, ma?" inquired her son, approaching her.

"Wring out hot flannels. It's sense to treat colic the same, whether it's in a horse or a baby."

Zeke laughed. "Ess.e.x Maid didn't think so, did she?"

"Wouldn't let us do a thing. I saw the tears drip out of Mr. Evringham's eyes plain as I see you now. Zeke Forbes, you'll never know what it was to me to have you come in and speak the way you did. You couldn't have done it if you'd mistreated the horse any way."

"Thank you," returned the coachman emphatically. "I ain't monkeying with buzz saws this year."

"Not knowingly you wouldn't. But, child,"--Mrs. Forbes set down the kettle and pressed the other hand tighter to her bosom as she came closer to him, "last night you'd been drinking when you came home."

"Ho!" laughed Zeke uncomfortably, "just a smile or two with the boys. By ginger, you've got a nose on you, mother."

"Can you think of your father and then laugh over it, Zeke? There hasn't a man ever come to be a sot that didn't laugh about it in the first place."

"Now, mother, now, now," said the young fellow in half-impatient tones of consolation, as he took the handkerchief from her ap.r.o.n pocket and wiped her eyes, where tears began to spring. "You must trust a chap to do what's right. I ain't a fool. Don't you think about this again. I can take care of myself. Come now, to change the subject, what's your opinion of Christian Science as applied to horses with the colic?"

"What do you mean?" returned the housekeeper in an unusually subdued tone.

"Why, didn't you catch on? The kid was over there in the corner treating the Maid. That's what they call it, treating 'em. Mr. Evringham laughed when he found out, and she jumped on him. Yes, she did; came right out and told him that wasn't the way to show his grat.i.tude, or something like that. Think of the nerve!"

"I ain't surprised. That child can't surprise me."

"But what do you think of it, ma? I tell you 't was queer, the way that mare's pain stopped. Of course I ain't going to believe--but," firmly, "I can't get away from a notion that those Christian Science folks know something that we don't. Busby was madder'n a hornet. I didn't scarcely know what to say to him."

"Don't be soft, Zeke," returned his mother, picking up the kettle. "The time for superst.i.tion has gone by."

As Jewel and her grandfather entered the house they heard music.

"That's cousin Eloise playing. Have you heard her grandpa?"

"Yes, when they first came."

"Than you haven't sat with them in the evening for a long time?"

suggested the child.