Jewel: A Chapter in Her Life Part 50

"He said he wished I wouldn't talk to you and go to church and everything."

The girl bit a blade of gra.s.s and eyed the child's serious face.

"Well, what are you going to do about it?"

"I asked G.o.d to show me. I wish Dr. Ballard would study with you."

"That is impossible. He has spent years learning his science, and he loves it and is proud of it; so what next?"

"Very queer things happen sometimes," rejoined Jewel doubtfully.

"But not so queer as that would be," returned Eloise.

Jewel was pondering. This was very delicate ground, and she still felt some awe of her cousin; however, there was only one thing to consider.

"Do you love him better than anybody, cousin Eloise?" she asked.

A flood of color warmed the girl's face, but she had to smile.

"Would that make the difference?" she asked. "Mustn't we want the truth anyway?"

Jewel heaved a mighty sigh. She was thinking of Dr. Ballard's pensive eyes. "I should _think_ so," she answered frankly; "because if you just study the truth, and hold on tight, how can things be anything but happy at last? I wish I was more grown up, cousin Eloise," she added apologetically.

"Oh no, no," answered the girl, with a little catch in her throat. "I've had so much of grown-up people, Jewel! I'm so grown up myself! Just a little while ago I was a schoolgirl, busy and happy all the time. I never even went out anywhere except with father, and with Nat when he was at home from college. You don't know Nat, but you'd like him."

"Why! Is he a Christian Scientist?"

For answer Eloise laughed low but heartily. "Nat a Christian Scientist!"

she mused aloud. "Not exactly, my little cousin!"

"Then should I like him as well as Dr. Ballard?" asked Jewel incredulously.

"I don't know. Tastes differ."

"Does he like horses?" asked the child.

"He knows everything about a horse and a yacht except how to pay for them, poor boy," returned Eloise.

"Is he poor?"

"Yes, he is poor and expensive. It is a bad combination; it is almost as bad as being poor and extravagant. His mother is a widow, and they haven't much, but what there was she has insisted on spending on him--that is, all she could spare from the doctor's bills."

"She needs Science then, doesn't she?"

"Jewel, that would be one thing that would keep me from wanting to be a Scientist. What's the fun of being one unless everybody else is? My mother, for instance."

"Yes; but then you'd find out how to help her."

Eloise glanced at the child curiously. She thought it would be interesting to peep into Jewel's mind and see her estimate of Aunt Madge.

"My mother has a great deal to trouble her," she said loyally.

"Yes, I know she thinks she has," returned the child.

Again her response surprised her companion.

"I'll take you as you are, Jewel," she said. "I'm glad you're not grown up. You're fresher from the workshop."

CHAPTER XXI

AN EFFORT FOR TRUTH

When Eloise spoke in the ravine of talking with her grandfather, it was because for a few days she had been trying to make up her mind to an interview with him. A fortnight ago she would have felt this to be impossible; but subtle changes had been going on in herself, and, she thought, in him. If her mother would undertake the interview now and take that stand with Mr. Evringham which Eloise felt that self-respect demanded, the girl would gladly escape it; but there was no prospect of such a thing. Mrs. Evringham was only too glad to benefit by her father-in-law's modified mood, to glide along the surface of things and wait--Eloise knew it, knew it every day, in moments when her cheeks flushed hot--for Dr. Ballard to throw the handkerchief.

The girl wished to talk with Mr. Evringham without her mother's knowledge, and the prospect was a dreaded ordeal. She felt that they had won his contempt, and she feared the loss of her own self-control when she should come to touch upon the sore spots.

"What would you do, Jewel," she asked the next morning, after they had read the lesson; "what would you do if you were afraid of somebody?"

"I wouldn't be," returned the child quickly.

"Well, I am. Now what am I going to do about it?"

Anna Belle, who always gave unwinking attention to the lesson, was in Jewel's lap, and the child twisted out the in-turning morocco foot as she spoke.

"Why, I'd know that one thought of G.o.d couldn't be afraid of another,"

she replied in the conclusive tone to which Eloise could never grow accustomed.

"Oh, Jewel, child," the girl said impatiently, "we'd be sorry to think most of the people we know are thoughts of G.o.d."

"That's because you get the error man mixed up with the real one. Mother explains that to me when we ride in cable cars and places where we see error people with sorry faces. There's a real man, a real thought of G.o.d, behind every one of them; and when you remember to think right about people every minute, you are doing them good. Did you say you're afraid of somebody?"

"Yes, and that somebody is a man whom I must talk to."

"Then begin right away to know every minute that the real man isn't anybody to be afraid of, for G.o.d made him, and G.o.d has only loving thoughts; and of course you must be loving all the time. It'll be just as _easy_ by the time you come to it, cousin Eloise!"

The girl often asked herself in these days why she should begin to feel unreasonably hopeful and lighter hearted. Her mother no longer complained of her moods. Mrs. Evringham laid the becoming change in her daughter's expression to the girl's happiness in discovering that she did reciprocate Dr. Ballard's evident sentiments.

"Eloise is so high minded," thought the mother complacently. "She would never be satisfied to marry for convenience, like so many;" and considering herself pa.s.singly astute, she let well enough alone, ceased to bring the physician's name into every conversation, and bided her time.

One morning Mr. Evringham, coming out of the house to go to town, met Eloise on the piazza.

"You are down early," he said as he greeted her, and was pa.s.sing on to the carriage.

"Just one minute, grandfather!" she exclaimed, and how her heart beat.

He turned his erect form in some surprise, and his cold eyes met the girlish ones.

"She's a stunning creature," he thought, as the sunlight bathed her young beauty; but his face was impenetrable, and Eloise nerved herself.