“Oh, no, father!” replied Julia, smiling.  “There is nothing I desire less.”

“Mother’ll get acquainted with the people at church,” said Jewel, “and I know she’ll love Mr. and Mrs. Reeves.  They’re grandpa’s friends, mother.”

“Yes,” remarked Mr. Evringham, busy with his dinner, “some of the best people in Bel-Air have gone over to this very strange religion of yours, Julia.  I shan’t be quite so conspicuous in harboring two followers of the faith as I should have been a few years ago.”

“No, it is becoming quite respectable,” returned Julia, with twinkling eyes.

“Three, grandpa, you have three here,” put in Jewel.  “You didn’t count Zeke.”

Mrs. Evringham looked up kindly at Mrs. Forbes, who stood by, as usual, in her neat gown and apron.

“Zeke is really in for it, eh, Mrs. Forbes?” Mr. Evringham asked the question without glancing up.

“Yes, sir, and I have no objection.  I’m too grateful for the changes for the better in the boy.  If Jewel had persuaded him to be a fire worshiper I shouldn’t have lifted my voice.  I’d have said to myself, ’What’s a little more fire here, so long as there’ll be so much less hereafter.’”

Mrs. Evringham laughed and the broker shook his head.  “Mrs. Forbes, Mrs. Forbes, I’m afraid your orthodoxy is getting rickety,” he said.

“How about your own, father?” asked Julia.

“Oh, I’m a passenger.  You see, I know that Jewel will ask at the heavenly gate if I can come in, and if they refuse, they won’t get her, either.  That makes me feel perfectly safe.”

Jewel watched the speaker seriously.  Mr. Evringham met her thoughtful eyes.

“Oh, they’ll want you, Jewel.  Don’t you be afraid.”

“I’m not afraid.  How could I be?  But I was just wondering whether you didn’t know that you’ll have to do your own work, grandpa.”

He looked up quickly and met Julia’s shining eyes.

“Dear me,” he responded, with an uncomfortable laugh.  “Don’t I get out of it?”

The next morning when Jewel had driven back from the station, and she and her mother had studied the day’s lesson, they returned to the ravine, taking the Story Book with them.

Before settling themselves to read, they counted the new wild flowers that had unfolded, and Jewel sprinkled them and the ferns, from the brook.

“Did you ever see anybody look so pretty as Anna Belle does, in that necklace?” exclaimed Jewel, fondly regarding her child, enthroned against the snowy trunk of a little birch-tree.  “It isn’t going to be your turn to choose the story this morning, dearie.  Here, I’ll give you a daisy to play with.”

“Wait, Jewel, I think Anna Belle would rather see it growing until we go, don’t you?”

“Would you, dearie?  Yes, she says she would; but when we go, we’ll take the sweet little thing and let it have the fun of seeing grandpa’s house and what we’re all doing.”