His mental processes were stiff when the subject related to things apart from the stock market, his horses, and golf, but he was finally understanding that his granddaughter had come to Bel-Air, prepared by accounts which had cast a glamour over everything and everybody in it.  She had evidently found Mrs. Forbes fall below her expectations.  He had been disillusioned concerning Mrs. Evringham and Eloise.  As yet the halo with which he himself had been invested was intact.  Was it to remain so?  He still saw how foolish he had been to send for the child.  He still wished, of course, that she was in Chicago now, instead of sitting across there from him in crisp short skirts, her head and shoulders only showing above the high table, and a little smile of good understanding waiting for him each time he looked up.

He had done very well during a lifetime without being hugged, yet the innocent incense, which had been rising spontaneously before him ever since the child entered the dining-room, had a strangely sweet savor.  Such was the joy of breakfast alone with him that it made her feel as if she had a birthday!  Perfectly absurd!  Quite the most absurd thing that he had ever heard in his life.

Mrs. Forbes spoke.  “Perhaps it is to be the same way about the rubbers, Mr. Evringham!” she said, much flushed.  “Perhaps you will not insist upon Julia wearing rubbers!”

“Oh yes, yes, certainly,” returned Mr. Evringham hastily, anxious to reinstate himself.  “I wish you to have a pair of rubbers at once, Julia—­Jewel.  You surely don’t mean that your mother has allowed you to wet your feet.”

“I—­I never noticed, grandpa, but,” hopefully, “she lets me wet my hands, so why not my feet?”

“Bless me, what ignorance!  Because the soles of your feet have large pores through which to catch cold.  Hasn’t any one ever told you that?”

Jewel smiled.  “That would be a queer arrangement for God to make, don’t you think?” she asked softly.  “Just as if He expected us to walk on our hands.”

Mrs. Forbes’s eyes widened, and an irrepressible “Well!” escaped from her lips.  “Has that young one reverence for anything in heaven above or earth beneath?” she queried mentally.

Mr. Evringham managed to recover himself sufficiently to say, “You shouldn’t speak so, Jewel.”

“But you know how it was about the tree of knowledge, grandpa,” replied the child earnestly.  “God told Adam not to eat of it, because then he’d believe in good and evil, and that always makes such lots and lots of trouble.  The Indians don’t have to wear rubbers.”

“Drink your milk, Jewel,” returned Mr. Evringham uncomfortably, not having the temerity to lift his eyes as high as his housekeeper’s countenance.  “No matter about the Indians.  You are a civilized little girl, and you must wear rubbers while you live with me.  Mrs. Forbes will very kindly buy them for you.”

“Oh, I have money,” returned Jewel brightly.  “I have three dollars,” she added, trying not to say it boastfully.  “Fifty cents for every week father and mother are going to be away.”