"When we finish we'll begin and read them all over again," returned Jewel promptly.

"Oh, that's your plan, is it?" said Mrs. Evringham, laughing.

Jewel laughed too, for sheer happiness, though she saw nothing amusing about such an obviously good plan. "Aren't we getting well acquainted, mother?" she asked, nestling close to her mother's side and forgetting Anna Belle, who at once lurched over, head downward, on the gra.s.s. "Do you remember what a little time you used to have to hold me in your lap and hug me?"

"Yes, dearie. Divine Love is giving me so many blessings these days I only pray to bear them well," replied Mrs. Evringham.

"Why, I think it's just as _easy_ to bear blessings, mother," began Jewel, and then she noticed her child's plight. "Darling Anna Belle, what are you doing!" she exclaimed, picking up the doll and brushing her dress. "I shouldn't think you had any more backbone than an error-fairy! Now don't look sorry, dearie, because to-day it's your turn to choose the story."

Anna Belle, her eyes beaming from among her tumbled curls, at once turned happy and expectant, and when her hat had been straightened and her boa removed so that her necklace could gleam resplendently about her fair, round throat, she was seated against a tree-trunk and listened with all her ears to the t.i.tles Mrs. Evringham offered.

After careful consideration, she made her choice, and Mrs. Evringham and Jewel settling themselves comfortably, the former began to read aloud the tale of--

THE GOLDEN DOG

If it had not been for the birds and brooks, the rabbits and squirrels, Gabriel would have been a very lonely boy.

His older brothers, William and Henry, did not care for him, because he was so much younger than they, and, moreover, they said he was stupid. His father might take some interest in him when he grew bigger and stronger and could earn money; but money was the only thing Gabriel's father cared for, and when the older brothers earned any they tried to keep it a secret from the father lest he should take it away from them. Gabriel had a stepmother, but she was a sorry woman, too full of care to be companionable. So he sought his comrades among the wild things in the woods, to get away from the quarrels at home.

He was a muscular, rosy-cheeked lad, and in the sports at school he could out-run and out-jump the other boys and was always good-natured with them; but even the children at the little country school did not like him very well, because the very things they enjoyed the most did not amuse him.

He tried to explain to them that the birds were his friends, and therefore he could not rob their nests; but they laughed at him almost as much as when he tried to dissuade them from mocking old Mother Lemon, as they pa.s.sed her cottage door on their way to and from school.

She was an old cross-patch, of course, they told him, or else she would not live alone on the edge of a forest, with n.o.body but a cat and owls for company.

"Perhaps she would be glad to have some one better for company," Gabriel replied.

"Go live with her, yourself, then, Gabriel," said one of the boys tauntingly. "That's right! Go leave your miser father, counting his gold all night while you are asleep, and too stingy to give you enough to eat, and go and be Mother Lemon's good little boy!" and then all the children laughed and hooted at Gabriel, who walked up to the speaker and knocked him over on the gra.s.s with such apparent ease and such a calm face, that all the laughers grew silent from mere surprise.

"You mustn't talk about my father to me," said Gabriel, explaining. Then he started for home, and the laughing began again, softly.

"It was true," he thought, as he trudged along. Things were getting worse at home, and sometimes he was hungry, for there was not too much on the table, and his big brothers fought for their share.

As he neared Mother Lemon's cottage, with its thatched roof and tiny windows, he saw the old woman, in her short gown, tugging at the well-sweep. It seemed very hard for her to draw up the heavy bucket.

Instantly Gabriel ran forward.

"Get out of here, now," cried the old woman, in a cracked voice, for she saw it was one of the school-children, and she was weary of their worrying tricks.

"Shan't I pull up the bucket for you?" asked Gabriel.

"Ah, I know you. You want to splash me!" returned Mother Lemon, eying him warily; but the boy put his strong arm to the task, and the dripping bucket rose from the depths, while the little old woman withdrew to a safer distance.

"Show me where to put it and I will carry it into the house for you," said Gabriel.

"Now bless your rosy cheeks, you're an honest lad," said Mother Lemon gratefully; but she took the precaution to walk behind him all the way, lest he should still be intending to play her some trick. When, however, he had entered the low door and filled the kettle and the pans, according to her directions, she smiled on him, and as she thanked him, she asked him his name.

"Gabriel," said the lad.

"Ah," she exclaimed, "you are the miser's boy."

Gabriel could not knock Mother Lemon down, so he only hung his head while his cheeks grew redder.

"It isn't your fault, child, and by the time you are grown you will be rich. When that time comes, I pray you be kinder to me than your father is, for he oppresses the poor and makes me pay my last shilling for the rent of this hovel."

"I would give the cottage to you if it were mine," returned Gabriel, looking straight into her eyes with his honest gray ones; "but at present I am poorer than you."

"In that case," said Mother Lemon, "I wish I had something worthy to reward you for your kindness to me. As I have not, here is a penny that you must keep to remember me by." And in spite of Gabriel's protestations she took from her side-pocket a coin.

"I cannot take it from you," protested the boy.

"No one ever grew richer by refusing to give," returned Mother Lemon, and she tucked the penny inside Gabriel's blouse and turned him out the door with her blessing; so that, being a peaceable boy of few words, he objected no longer, but moved along the road toward home, for it was nearly dinner time.

He found his stepmother setting the table, and his father busily calculating with figures on a bit of paper.

"Get the water, Gabriel, and be quick now," was his welcome from the sorry-faced woman.

When he had done all she directed him, there was still a little time, for William and Henry had not come in from the field. Gabriel sat down near his father and, noting a rusty, dusty little book lying on the table, he picked it up.

"What is this, father?" he asked, for there were few books in that house.

The man looked up from his figuring and sneered. "It is called by some the Book of Life," he said. "As a matter of fact it would not bring two shillings."

So saying he returned to his pleasant calculations and Gabriel idly opened the book. His gaze widened, for the verse on which his eyes fell stood out from the others in tiny letters of flame.

"_The love of money is the root of all evil_," he read.

"Father, father," he exclaimed, "what wonder is this? Look!" The miser turned, impatient of a second interruption. "See the letters of fire!"

"I see nothing. You grow stupider every day, Gabriel."

"But the letters burn, father," and then the boy read aloud the sentence which for him stood out so vividly on the page.

They had a surprising effect upon his listener. The miser grew pale and then red with anger. He rose and, standing over the boy, frowned furiously.

"I'll teach you to reprove your father," he cried. "Get out of my house. No dinner for you to-day."

The stepmother had heard what Gabriel read, and well she knew the truth of those words.

As the astonished boy gathered himself up and moved out the door, she went after him, calling in pretended sharpness; but when he came near, she whispered, "Come to the back of the shed in five minutes," and when Gabriel obeyed, later, he found there a thick piece of bread and a lump of cheese.

These he took, hungrily, and ate them in the forest before returning to school. He had never felt so kindly toward school as this afternoon. Were it not for what he learned there, he could not have read the words in the Book of Life; and although they had brought him into trouble, he would not have foregone the wonder of seeing the living, burning characters which his father could not perceive. He longed to open those dusty covers once again.

On his way home that afternoon he met two boys teasing a small brown dog.

Its coat was stuck full of burrs and it tried in vain to escape from its tormentors. The boys stopped to let Gabriel go by, for they had a wholesome respect for his strong right arm and they knew his love for animals. The trembling little dog looked at him in added fear.

Gabriel stood still. "Will you give me that dog?" he asked.