“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.”

Eloise gave a little exclamation.  “I call it the icebox,” she returned.

Jewel’s face lighted.  “That’s it, that’s all it is,” she said eagerly.  “It’s easy to melt ice.  Love melts everything.”

“It’s pretty slow work sometimes,” said Eloise.

“Then you have to put on more love.  That’s all.  Have you”—­the child asked the question a little timidly, “have you put on much love to grandpa?”

“Why should I love him?” asked Eloise.  “He doesn’t love me.”

“Oh dear,” said Jewel.  After a minute’s thought her face brightened.  “I guess I’ll show you my dotted letter.”

She ran to the closet where hung her dotted challie dress and took from the pocket the message that had come to her the evening of her arrival.  “My mother put a letter into all my pockets for a happy surprise; and this one came the first night, when I was feeling all sorry and alone, and it comforted me.  Perhaps it will comfort you.”

She put the paper into the girl’s hand, and Eloise read it.  She turned it over and read it a second time.

Jewel stood beside her chair watching, and seeing that her cousin seemed interested, she ran and brought her little wrapper.  “Perhaps you’d like to see this one too,” she said feeling in the pocket for the second message.

Eloise accepted and read it.  Every word of the two notes came to the mind of the young girl as suggestions from another planet, so foreign were they to any instruction or advice that had ever fallen to her lot.

She gave a slight exclamation as she finished.  “Is your mother a saint?” she asked, looking up suddenly.

“No,” returned Jewel innocently.  “She’s a Christian Scientist.”

Eloise suddenly put out her hand, and drawing Jewel to her, hid her forehead on the child’s breast.

“I wish you were older,” she said.

Jewel put her little hands on the shining waves of hair she had admired from afar.  “I wish my mother was here,” she answered.  “Did you like those things mother said?”