“I have a reason. I will help you with your studies every day if you won't tell him.”
“I might without meaning to,” rejoined the child, her alert little mind busy with the new problem suddenly presented to it.
“I will make a rainbow scarf for Anna Belle if you will never speak of me to your grandfather.”
“Why do you say my grandfather? He's yours, too.”
“Not at all. Didn't you just say I was not your real relation?”
“Oh but, cousin Eloise,” Jewel was sure of the hurt now, though the why or wherefore was a mystery, “of course he wishes you were.”
“Oh no he doesn't.” The answer came quick and sharp, and the child reviewed mentally her own observations of the household. Her heart swelled with the desire to help.
“Now, cousin Eloise,” her breath came a little faster with the thronging thoughts for which her vocabulary was insufficient, “error does try to cheat people so. Just think how kind you were inside all the time, though you wouldn't smile at me. You're willing to make Anna Belle a scarf. I called you the enchanted maiden, because you were too sorry to try to make people happy, and now grandpa's just like that; he's enchanted, too, if he doesn't make you happy, because he's just as kind inside, oh, just as kind as he can be.”
“He likes you,” returned Eloise.
Jewel regarded her for a silent moment. “I noticed when I came,” she said at last, apologetically, “that nobody here seemed to love one another; and the house was so grand and the people were so beautiful that I couldn't understand; and I called it Castle Discord.”