"Oh, my girl, you'll have him captured in a week, and Jewel will have a rival. You have the same knack she has for making the indifferent different."
At this juncture the housekeeper came back into the hall.
"Well, Mrs. Forbes," said Harry, rising, "that was rather amusing important business Jewel had with my father."
The housekeeper held up her hands and shook her head. "Such lovers, sir," she responded. "Such lovers! Whatever he's going to do without her is more than I know."
"Why, it's a big change come over father, to be fond of children," returned the young man, openly perplexed.
"Children!" repeated the housekeeper. "If you suppose, Mr. Harry, that Jewel is any common child, you must have had a wonderful experience."
Her impressive, almost solemn manner, sobered the father's mood. "What she is, is the result of what her mother has taught her," he returned.
"Not one of us wanted her when she came," said the housekeeper, looking from one to the other of the young couple standing before her. "Not one person in the house was half civil to her." Julia's hand tightened on her husband's arm. "I didn't want anybody troubling Mr. Evringham. People called him a hard, cold, selfish man; but I knew his trials, yes, Mr. Harry, you know I knew them. He was my employer and it was my business to make him comfortable, and I hated that dear little girl because I'd made up my mind that she'd upset him. Well, Jewel didn't know anything about hate, not enough to know it when she saw it. She just loved us all, through thick and thin, and you'll have to wait till you can read what the recording angel's set down, before you can have any full idea of what she's done for us. She's made a humble woman out of me, and I was the stiff-neckedest member of the congregation. There's my only child, Zeke; she's persuaded him out of habits that were breaking up our lives. There was Eloise Evringham, without hope or God in the world. She gave her both, that little Jewel did. Then, most of all, she crept into Mr. Evringham's empty heart and filled it full, and made his whole life, as you might say, blossom again. That's what she's done, single handed, in two months, and she has no more conceit of her work than a ray of God's sunshine has when it's opening a flower bud."
Julia Evringham's gaze was fixed intently upon the speaker, and she was unconscious that two tears rolled down her cheeks.
"You've made us very happy, telling us this," she said, rather breathlessly, as the housekeeper paused.