Miss Fletcher's thin lips parted as she listened to the sentences that the child read. She understood scarcely more than Flossie of what they were hearing, excepting the Bible verses, and these did not seem to bear on the case. It was Hazel's perfectly unhesitating certainty of manner and voice which most impressed her, and when the child had finished she continued to stare at her unconsciously.
"Now," said Hazel, returning her look, "I guess I'd better treat her before we begin to play."
Her hostess started. "Oh!" she ejaculated, "then I suppose you'd rather be alone."
"Yes, it's easier," returned the little girl.
Miss Fletcher, feeling rather embarrassed, gathered up her sewing and moved off to the house.
"If I ever in all my born days!" she thought again. "What would Flossie's mother say! Well, that dear little girl's prayers can't do any harm, and if she isn't a smart young one I never saw one. She's Fletcher clear through. I'd like to know what Richard Badger thinks of her. If she'd give him a few absent treatments it might do him some good."
Miss Fletcher's lips took their old grim line as she added this reflection, but she was not altogether comfortable. Her nephew's action in withholding from Hazel the fact that it was her aunt whom she was visiting daily could scarcely have other than a kindly motive; and that long list of Bible references which she had read to Flossie last evening had stirred her strangely. There was one, "He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love," which had followed her to bed and occupied her thoughts for some time.
Now she went actively to work preparing the luncheon which she intended serving to the children later.
"And I'd better fix enough for two laboring men," she thought, smiling.
Later, when she went back under the tree, her little guest skipped up to her. "Oh, aunt Hazel," she said, and the address softened the hostess's eyes, "won't you and Flossie come to-morrow afternoon if it's pleasant, and have lunch beside my garden?"