Jewels Story Book | Page 2

trunks, and Jewel with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes told her great news.
Mrs. Forbes was instantly sympathetic. "Come right upstairs and let me help you get ready. Dear me, to-night! I wonder if they'll want any supper when they get here."
"I don't know. I don't know!" sang Jewel to a tune of her own improvising, as she skipped ahead.
"I don't believe they will," mused Mrs. Forbes. "Those customs take so much time. It seems a very queer thing to me, Jewel, Mr. Evringham letting you come in at all. Why, you'll very likely not get home till midnight."
"Won't it be the most fun!" cried the child, dancing to her closet and getting her checked silk dress.
"I guess your flannel sailor suit will be the best, Jewel."
"Grandpa said I might wear my silk. You see I'm going to dinner with him, and that's just like going to a party, and I ought to be very particular, don't you think so?"
"Well, don't sit down on anything dirty at the wharf. I expect you will," returned Mrs. Forbes with a resigned sigh, as she proceeded to unfasten Jewel's tight, thick little braids.
"Just think what a short time we'll have to miss cousin Eloise," said the child. "Day before yesterday she went away, and now to-morrow my mother'll braid my hair." She gave an ecstatic sigh.
"If that's all you wanted your cousin Eloise for--to braid your hair--I guess I could get to do it as well as she did."
"Oh, I loved cousin Eloise for everything and I always shall love her," responded the child quickly. "I only meant I didn't have to trouble you long with my hair."
"I think I do it pretty well."
"Yes, indeed you do--just as tight. Do you remember how much it troubled you when I first came? and now it's so much different!"
"Yes, there are a whole lot of things that are much different," replied Mrs. Forbes. "How long do you suppose you'll be staying with us now, Jewel?"
The child's face grew sober. "I don't know, because I don't know how long father and mother can stay."
"You'll think about this room where you've lived so many weeks, when you get back to Chicago."
"Yes, I shall think about it lots of times," said the little girl. "I knew it would be a lovely visit at grandpa's, and it has been."
She glanced up in the mirror toward the housekeeper's face and saw that the woman's lips were working suspiciously and her eyes brimming over.
"You won't be lonely, will you, Mrs. Forbes?" she asked; "because grandpa says you want to live with Zeke in the barn this summer while he shuts up the house and goes off on his vacation."
"Oh, yes; it's all right, Jewel, only it just came over me that in a week, or perhaps sooner, you'll be gone."
"It's real kind of you to be glad to have me stay," said the child. "I try not to think about going away, because it does make me feel sorry every time. You know the soot blows all around in Chicago and we haven't any yard, and when I think about all the sky and trees here, and the ravine, beside grandpa and you and Zeke and Essex Maid--why I have to just say 'I won't be sorry,' and then think about father and mother and Star and all the nice things! I think Star will like the park pretty well." Jewel looked into space thoughtfully, and then shook her head. "I'm sure the morning we go I shall have to say: 'Green pastures are before me' over and over."
"What do you mean, child?"
"Why, you know the psalm: 'He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters'?"
"Yes."
"Well, in our hymnal there's the line of a hymn: 'Green pastures are before me,' and mother and I used to say that line every morning when we woke up, to remind us that Love was going to lead us all day."
"I'd like to see your mother," said Mrs. Forbes after a pause.
"You will, to-night," cried Jewel, suddenly joyous again. "Oh, Mrs. Forbes, do you think I could take Anna Belle to New York?"
"What did Mr. Evringham say?"
"He went away before I had a chance to ask him." Jewel looked wistfully toward the chair where the doll sat by the window, toeing in, her sweet gaze fixed on the wall-paper. "She would enjoy it so!" added the little girl.
"Oh, it's a tiresome trip for children, such late hours," returned Mrs. Forbes persuasively. "Beside," with an inspiration, "you'd like your hands free to help your mother carry her bags, wouldn't you?"
"That's so," responded Jewel. "Anna Belle would always give up anything for her grandma!" and as the housekeeper finished tying the hair bows, the little girl skipped over to the chair