“Well, now, you’re a good little patient,” went on the doctor, as he noted the clear eyes.

“Yes, Dr. Ballard, I feel just as nice as can be,” she answered.

“No thickness in the voice.  I fancy that sore throat is better.”  The young doctor could not repress his smile of satisfaction.  “I was certain that was the right attenuation,” he thought.  “Now let us see.”

He took out the little thermometer, and Jewel submitted to having it slipped beneath her tongue.

As Dr. Ballard leaned back in his chair to wait, he looked up at Mr. Evringham.  “It is very gratifying,” he said, “to find these conditions at this hour of the day.  I felt a little more uneasy this morning than I confessed.”  He nodded in satisfactory thought.  “I grant you medicine is not an exact science, it is an art, an art.  You can’t prescribe by hard and fast rules.  You must take into consideration the personal equation.”

Presently he leaned forward and removed the thermometer.  His eyes smiled as he read it, and he lifted it toward Mr. Evringham.

“I can’t see it, boy.”

“Well, there’s nothing to see.  She hasn’t a particle of temperature.  Look here, little one,” frowning at Jewel, “if everybody recovered as quickly as you have, where would we doctors be?”

Turning again and addressing Mr. Evringham, he went on, “I’m particularly interested in this result because that is a remedy over which there has been some altercation.  There’s one man to whom I shall be glad to relate this experience.”  The doctor leaned toward his little patient.  “Jewel, I’m not so surprised as I might be at your improvement,” he said kindly.  “You will have to excuse me for a little righteous deception.  I put medicine into that glass of water, and now you’re glad I did, aren’t you?  I’d like you to tell me, little girl, as near as you can, how often you took it?”

“I didn’t take it,” replied the child.

Dr. Ballard drew back a little.  “You mean,” he said after a moment, “you took it only once?”

“No, sir, I didn’t take it at all.”

There was a silence, during which all could hear the ticking of the clock on the table, and the three pairs eyes were fixed on Jewel with such varying expressions of amazement and disapproval that the child’s breath began to come faster.

“Didn’t you drink any of the water?” asked Dr. Ballard at last.

“Yes, out of the pitcher.”

“Why not out of the glass?”

“It didn’t look enough.  I was so thirsty.”

They could not doubt her.

Mr. Evringham finally found his voice.

“Jewel, why didn’t you obey the doctor?” His eyes and voice were so serious that she stretched out her arm.

“Oh, grandpa,” she said, “please let me take hold of your hand.”

“No, not till you answer me.  Little girls should be obedient.”

Jewel thought a minute.