“I thought she wasn’t dead!” she heard Ruth exclaim joyfully; and the words and tone set her wondering.

“I saw you did not seem greatly astonished at the sight of her; but what made you think such an unlikely thing?” rejoined her uncle.

“I saw you did not believe she was dead.  That was enough for me.”

“You are a witch, Ruth!  I never said a word one way or the other.”

“Which showed that you were thinking, and made me think.  You had something in your mind which you did not choose to tell me yet.”

“Ah, child!” rejoined her uncle, in a solemn tone, “how difficult it is to hide any thing!  I don’t think God wants any thing hidden.  The light is His region, His kingdom, His palace-home.  It can only be evil, outside or in, that makes us turn from the fullest light of the universe.  Truly one must be born again to enter into the kingdom!”

Juliet heard every word, heard and was bewildered.  The place in which she had sought refuge was plainly little better than a kobold-cave, yet merely from listening to the talk of the kobolds without half understanding it, she had begun already to feel a sense of safety stealing over her, such as she had never been for an instant aware of in the Old House, even with Dorothy beside her.

They went on talking, and she went on listening.  They were so much her inferiors there could be no impropriety in doing so!

“The poor lady,” she heard the man-goblin say, “has had some difference with her husband; but whether she wants to hide from him or from the whole world or from both, she only can tell.  Our business is to take care of her, and do for her what God may lay to our hand.  What she desires to hide, is sacred to us.  We have no secrets of our own, Ruth, and have the more room for those of other people who are unhappy enough to have any.  Let God reveal what He pleases:  there are many who have no right to know what they most desire to know.  She needs nursing, poor thing!  We will pray to God for her.”

“But how shall we make her comfortable in such a poor little house?” returned Ruth.  “It is the dearest place in the world to me—­but how will she feel in it?”

“We will keep her warm and clean,” answered her uncle, “and that is all an angel would require.”

“An angel!—­yes,” answered Ruth:  “for angels don’t eat; or, at least, if they do, for I doubt if you will grant that they don’t, I am certain that they are not so hard to please as some people down here.  The poor, dear lady is delicate—­you know she has always been—­and I am not much of a cook.”

“You are a very good cook, my dear.  Perhaps you do not know a great many dishes, but you are a dainty cook of those you do know.  Few people can have more need than we to be careful what they eat,—­we have got such a pair of troublesome cranky little bodies; and if you can suit them, I feel sure you will be able to suit any invalid that is not fastidious by nature rather than necessity.”