“What’s this, Jewel?” he said quickly, fearfully embarrassed before his wondering audience.  “This is very irregular, very irregular.”  He dropped his fork perforce, and his hand closed over the little arm across his cravat.

Jewel was trying to control a sob that struggled to escape, and saying over and over, as nearly as he could understand, something about God being Love.

“Go right back to your chair now, like a good girl.”

“Do you—­love me?” whispered Jewel.

“Yes—­yes, I do.”

“You spoke like”—­a sob—­“like hating.”

“Not at all, not at all,” rejoined Mr. Evringham quickly, “but I was very much surprised, very.”

“Shall I take her upstairs, sir?” asked Mrs. Forbes, nearly bursting with the outrage of such an interruption to her employer’s sacred dinner.

“No, she’s going to sit right down in her chair and not make any trouble.  Don’t you like those roses I brought you, Jewel?” he added awkwardly, hoping to make a diversion.  He was successful.  She lowered her face, a fleeting April smile flitting over it.

“Did grandfather bring you those lovely roses?” asked Eloise.

Mr. Evringham flashed her his first glance of approval for so quickly taking the cue.

“Yes,” replied the child, her breath catching as she went back to her chair.  “I seemed so sick when he went away this morning was the reason; so now I’m well again—­they belong to everybody, don’t they, grandpa?”

Mr. Evringham paused to consider a reply.  He desired to be careful in public not to draw upon himself that small catapult.

“They belong to you still, Jewel.  I never take back my presents,” he returned at last.

“And I think Mrs. Forbes was mistaken about the false pretends,” said the child, swallowing and looking apologetically at the housekeeper, “because who would pretend such error as sickness, and of course you’d know I didn’t pretend.”

“Certainly not,” said Mr. Evringham.  “Mrs. Forbes didn’t mean that.  The whole thing seems like a dream now,” he added.

“What else could it seem like?” returned Jewel, smiling faintly toward her grandfather with an air of having caught him napping.

“Like reality,” he returned dryly.

She gazed at him, her smile fading.

He looked up apprehensively and cringed a little, not at all sure that the next instant would not find the rose-leaf cheek next his, and a close whisper driving cold chills down his back; but the child only paused a moment.

“Reality is so much different from sin, disease, and death,” she said at last, in a matter-of-fact manner.  It was too much for Mrs. Evringham’s risibles.  She laughed in spite of her daughter’s reproachful glance.

“How wonderful if true!” she exclaimed.

“It is true,” returned Jewel soberly.  “Even Anna Belle knows that; but I’m sure that you haven’t learned anything about Christian Science, aunt Madge,” she added politely.