“Does she ever feel sorry?”

“Sometimes; but it can’t last where the Bible is.”

“I never saw that the Bible had anything to do with us,” said Eloise.

“Why—­ee!” Jewel suddenly dropped Anna Belle and again took up the Bible.

“What do you think I opened to?” holding the verse with her finger as she looked up.  Then she read, “’If ye love them that love you what thank have ye?’ Now isn’t that something to do with you and grandpa?”

“I don’t see how I can love people who don’t choose to be lovable,” returned Eloise.  “What’s the use of pretending?”

“But then,” said the child, “the trouble is that everything that isn’t love is hate.”

Her visitor raised her eyebrows.  “Ah!  I should have to think about that,” she returned.

“Yes, you’d better,” agreed Jewel.  Then she turned to the Psalms and read the ninety-first.

When she had finished she looked up at her cousin, an earnest questioning in her eyes.

“That is very beautiful,” said Eloise.  “I never heard it before.  How well you read it, Jewel.”

“Yes,” replied the child.  “It’s so much easier to read things when you know them by heart.”  Then she turned to the Twenty-third Psalm and read it.

“Yes, I’ve heard that one.  It’s beautiful of course, but I never thought of its having anything to do with us.”  Eloise was watching her cousin curiously.  It seemed too strange for belief that a healthy child of her age should be taking a vital interest in the Bible and endeavoring to prove a position from its pages.

When the girl finally rose to go she turned at the door:—­

“Remember your promise not to tell grandfather about this morning,” she said.

Jewel, hovering about her, looked troubled.

“Would you just as lief tell me why?” she asked.

Eloise gave the ghost of a smile.  “It would be a long story, and I scarcely think you would understand.”

“I think I could obey you better if you would tell me.”

“Very well.  We, my mother and I, are not Mr. Evringham’s real relations,—­to put it as you do,—­and we have come here because my poor father lost his money and we have nowhere else to go.  We came without being invited, and it hurts to have to stay where we are not wanted.  I don’t wish grandfather to think that I am being kind to you, for fear he will believe that I am doing it to make him like me better and because I want to stay here.”

The girl spoke slowly and with great clearness.

Jewel looked at her, speechless with surprise and perplexity.

Eloise went on:  “I don’t want to stay here, you understand.  I wish to go away.  I would go to-day if my mother were willing.”

Her large eyes grew dark as she closed, and the child received a sense of the turbulence that underlay her words.

“Thank you for explaining,” she returned in an awed tone.  “I wish my mother was here; but God is, and He’ll take care of you, cousin Eloise.  Mother says we don’t ever need to stay in the shadow.  There’s always the sunshine, only we must do our part, we must come into it.”