“You must be hungry, Jewel; you hadn’t finished your dinner,” said her grandfather, but she protested that she was not.

“How is Anna Belle?” asked Dr. Ballard.  “It’s a long time since I saw her.”

“Would you like to?” asked Jewel doubtfully.

“Why—­of—­course!—­if she’s still up.  Don’t have her dress on my account.”

“She doesn’t go to bed till I do,” responded the child.  “I know she’d love to come down!” In a flash she had bounded to the door and disappeared.

Eloise was still sitting on the piano stool, facing the room.  “Grandfather,” she said, leaning slightly forward in her earnestness, “did Jewel really treat Essex Maid?”

The broker shrugged his shoulders and smiled as he stirred his coffee.

“I believe she did.”

“And do you think it did the horse any good?”

“Don’t be absurd!” cried her mother laughingly, on nettles lest the girl displease the young doctor.

“Don’t crowd me, Eloise, don’t crowd me,” responded Mr. Evringham.  “I’d rather have something a little more substantial doing for a sick horse than the prayers of an infant; eh, Ballard?”

“I’ve been reading Jewel’s Christian Science book a great deal the last few days,” said Eloise.  “If it’s the truth, then she helped Essex Maid.”

Mrs. Evringham was dismayed.  “What a very large if, my dear,” she returned lightly.

“She’s a bright little girl,” said Dr. Ballard, and as he spoke Jewel came back.

She brought her doll straight to him, and he took both child and doll on his lap.

“Dear fellow,” thought Mrs. Evringham, “how fond he is of children!  I’d like to put Eloise in a strait-jacket.  Do play some more, dear, won’t you?” she said aloud, eager to return to safe ground.

“Oh yes, cousin Eloise,” added Jewel ardently.

“If you will sing afterward.  Will you?” asked the girl.

“Can you sing, Jewel?” asked Mr. Evringham.

“No, grandpa, nothing but the tunes in church.”

“Well,” he responded, half smiling again, “I don’t know that a hymn would be so out of place to-night.”

“Do play the lovely running thing about spring, cousin Eloise,” begged the child.

The girl turned back to the piano.  “Jewel is so modern that she doesn’t know the Mendelssohn ‘Spring Song,’” she said, and forthwith she began it.

Jewel’s head lay back against Dr. Ballard’s shoulder, and her eyes never swerved from the white-robed musician.

When the player had finished and been thanked, the child and the doctor exchanged a look of appreciation.  “That sounds the way it does in the Ravine of Happiness,” said Jewel.

“Where is that?”

“Where the brook is.”

“Oh!” Dr. Ballard had unpleasant associations with the brook.  “I understand you are fond of horses,” he added irrelevantly.

“Oh yes.”