up to our lights very well. 'Tisn't always a
question of sick bodies, Flossie."

Hazel came bounding back to the elm-tree, and sitting down near the wheeled
chair, opened the Bible and two of the books she had brought, and proceeded
to read the lesson. Had she been a few years older, she would not have
attempted this without a word of explanation to two people to whom many of
the terms of her religion were strange, but no doubts assailed her. The
little white girl in the wheeled chair was going to get out of it and run
around and be happy--that was all Hazel knew, and she proceeded in the only
way she knew of to bring it about.

Miss Fletcher's thin lips parted as she listened to the sentences that the
child read. She understood scarcely more than Flossie of what they were
hearing, excepting the Bible verses, and these did not seem to bear on the
case. It was Hazel's perfectly unhesitating certainty of manner and voice
which most impressed her, and when the child had finished she continued to
stare at her unconsciously.

"Now," said Hazel, returning her look, "I guess I'd better treat her before
we begin to play."

Her hostess started. "Oh!" she ejaculated, "then I suppose you'd rather be
alone."

"Yes, it's easier," returned the little girl.

Miss Fletcher, feeling rather embarrassed, gathered up her sewing and moved
off to the house.

"If I ever in all my born days!" she thought again. "What would Flossie's
mother say! Well, that dear little girl's prayers can't do any harm, and if
she isn't a smart young one I never saw one. She's Fletcher clear through.
I'd like to know what Richard Badger thinks of her. If she'd give _him_ a
few absent treatments it might do him some good."

Miss Fletcher's lips took their old grim line as she added this reflection,
but she was not altogether comfortable. Her nephew's action in withholding
from Hazel the fact that it was her aunt whom she was visiting daily could
scarcely have other than a kindly motive; and that long list of Bible
references which she had read to Flossie last evening had stirred her
strangely. There was one, "He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is
love," which had followed her to bed and occupied her thoughts for some
time.

Now she went actively to work preparing the luncheon which she intended
serving to the children later.

"And I'd better fix enough for two laboring men," she thought, smiling.

Later, when she went back under the tree, he