Mr. Evringham nodded.  “I will get you one.”  He kept on nodding slightly, and Jewel noted the expression of his eyes.  Her bright look began to cloud as her grandfather continued to gaze at her.

“You’d like to have a picture of Star to keep, wouldn’t you?” she asked softly, her head falling a little to one side in loving recognition of his sadness.

“Yes,” he answered, rather gruffly, “and I’ve been thinking for some weeks that there was a picture lacking on my desk here.”

“Star’s?” asked Jewel.

“No.  Yours.  Are there any pictures of you?”

“No, only when I was a baby.  You ought to see me.  I was as fat!”

“We’ll have some photographs of you.”

“Oh,” Jewel spoke wistfully, “I wish I was pretty.”

“Then you wouldn’t be an Evringham.”

“Why not?  You are,” returned the child, so spontaneously that slow color mounted to the broker’s face, and he smiled.

“I look like my mother’s family, they say.  At any rate,”—­after a pause and scrutiny of her,—­“it’s your face, it’s my Jewel’s face, that suits me and that I want to keep.  If I can find somebody who can do it and not change you into some one else, I am going to have a little picture painted; a miniature, that I can carry in my pocket when Essex Maid and I are left alone.”

The brusque pain in his tone filled Jewel’s eyes, and her little hands clasped tighter the frame she held in her lap.

“Then you will give me one of you, too, grandpa?”

“Oh, child,” he returned, rather hoarsely, “it’s too late to be painting my leather countenance.”

“No one could paint it just as I know it,” said Jewel softly.  “I know all the ways you look, grandpa,—­when you’re joking or when you’re sorry, or happy, and they’re all in here,” she pressed one hand to her breast in a simple fervor that, with her moist eyes, compelled Mr. Evringham to swallow several times; “but I’d like one in my hand to show to people when I tell them about you.”

The broker looked away and fussed with an envelope.

“Grandpa,” continued the child after a pause, “I’ve been thinking that there’s one secret we’ve got to keep from father and mother.”

Mr. Evringham looked back at her.  This was the most cheering word he had heard for some time.

“It wouldn’t be loving to let them know how sorry it makes us to say good-by, would it?  I get such lumps in my throat when I think about not riding with you or having breakfast together.  I do work over it and think how happy it will be to have father and mother again, and how Love gives us everything we ought to have and everything like that; but I have—­cried—­twice, thinking about it!  Even Anna Belle is mortified the way I act.  I know you feel sorry, too, and we’ve got to demonstrate over it; but it’ll come so soon, and I guess I didn’t begin to work in time.  Anyway, I was wondering if we couldn’t just have a secret and manage not to say good-by to each other.”  The corners of the child’s mouth were twitching down now, and she took out a small handkerchief and wiped her eyes.