“I think I’ll let you direct this yourself, Jewel,” he said.  He rose and brought the morocco cushion to his desk chair.  “Sit up here and I will tell you the address.”

She obeyed, and Mr. Evringham watched the little fingers clenched around the pen as she strove to resist its tendency to write down hill on the envelope.

“And you’re quite sure that more money will be forthcoming when yours is gone, eh?” he asked when the feat was accomplished.

“Oh yes; if I need it.”

“How will it come, for instance?”

She looked up quickly.  “I don’t need to know that,” she replied.

Mr. Evringham bit his lip.  “That’s unanswerable,” he thought, “and rather neat.”

At this moment a knock sounded at the library door, and a moment afterward Mrs. Forbes presented herself.

“Excuse me, Mr. Evringham.  I’m afraid Julia has been in your way, staying so long.”

“No, Mrs. Forbes, thank you,” he returned.  “She had a letter to write, and I have been reading.”

“Very well.  It is her bedtime now.”  The housekeeper’s tone was inexorable, and Jewel lifted her shoulders as she glanced up at her grandfather, and again he found himself taken into a confidence which excluded his excellent housekeeper.  “It is better for us to yield,” said Jewel’s shoulders and mute lips.  Before Mr. Evringham could suspect her intention, she had jumped up on the cushion nimbly as a squirrel, and hugging him in a business-like manner, kissed him twice.

“Good-night, grandpa.”

“Good-night, Jewel,” he returned, going to the length of patting her shoulder.

She jumped down and ran to Mrs. Forbes.  “You needn’t come with me, you know,” she said, holding up her face.  Mrs. Forbes hesitated a moment.  She had not as yet recovered from this latest liberty taken with the head of the house.

“Let me feel of your hands, Julia.”  She took them in hers and touched the child’s cheeks and forehead as well.  “You seem to feel all right, do you?”

“Yes’m.”

“No soreness or pain anywhere?”

“No’m.  Good-night, Mrs. Forbes.”

The housekeeper stooped from her height and accepted the offered kiss.

“Do you prefer to go alone, Jewel?  Isn’t it lonely for you?” asked Mr. Evringham.

“No—­o, grandpa!  Anna Belle is up there.”

“You’re not afraid of the dark then?”

Jewel looked at the speaker, uncertain of his seriousness.  He seemed in earnest, however.  “The dark is easy to drive away in this house,” she replied.  “It is so interesting, just like a treatment.  The room seems full of darkness, error, and I just turn the switch,” she illustrated with thumb and finger in the air, “and suddenly—­there isn’t any darkness!  It’s all bright and happy, just like me to-day!”

“Indeed!” returned Mr. Evringham, standing with his feet apart and his arms folded.  “Is that what the lady in Chicago did for you to-day?”