“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.” “How Jewel? Supposing you don't know how.” “You can learn how,” replied the child earnestly, “right in those books. Lots of sorry people grow glad studying them.” CHAPTER XVII JEWEL'S CORRESPONDENCE While Jewel still stood turning over in her mind what she had heard, charming strains of music began coming up through the hall. Cousin Eloise had gone to the piano. “I almost which I hadn't made her tell me,” thought the child, “for how can I help grandpa not to be sorry they are here? Wouldn't I be sorry to have aunt Madge come and live with me when I never asked her to?” She stood for some minutes wrestling with the problem, but suddenly her expression changed. “I was forgetting!” she exclaimed. “I mustn't get sorry too. God is All. Mortal mind can't do anything about it.” She closed her eyes, and pressing her hand to her lips, stood for a minute in mute realization; then with a smile of relief, she took up Anna Belle. “Let's go down, dearie, and hear the music,” she said light heartedly. When the summons to luncheon sounded and Mrs. Evringham entered the parlor, she found the child curled up in a big chair, her doll in her lap, listening absorbedly to the last strains of a Chopin Ballade. “Do you like music, Julia?” she asked patronizingly, as her daughter finished and turned about. “The child's name is Jewel,” said Eloise. “Yes, aunt Madge, I love it,” replied the little girl; “and I didn't know people could play the piano the way cousin Eloise does.” Mrs. Evringham smiled. “I suppose you've not heard much good music.”