Hazel shook her head violently. "You know when Jesus was on earth? Well, he never told anybody it was better for them to be sick. He healed everybody, _everybody_ that asked him, and he came to do the will of his Father; so G.o.d"s will doesn"t change, and it"s just the same now."
There was a faint color in Flossie"s cheeks. "If I was sure G.o.d wanted me to get well, why then I"d know I would some time."
"Of course He does; but you didn"t know how to ask Him right."
"Do _you_?" asked Flossie.
Hazel nodded. "Yes; not so well as mother, but I do know a little, and if you want me to, I"ll ask Him for you."
"Well, of course I do," returned Flossie, regarding her visitor with grave, wondering eyes.
In a minute Miss Fletcher, watching the children through a window, beheld something that puzzled her. She saw Hazel roll Flossie"s chair back under the elm-tree, and saw her sit down on the gra.s.s beside it and cover her eyes with both hands.
"What game are they playing?" she asked herself; and she smiled, well pleased by the friendship that had begun. "I wish health was catching," she sighed. "Little Hazel"s a picture. I wonder how long it"ll be before she finds out who I am. I wonder what Richard"s idea is in not telling her."
She moved about the house a few minutes, and then returned, curiously, to the window. To her surprise matters were exactly as she saw them last.
Flossie was, holding both dolls in the wheeled chair, and Hazel was sitting under the tree, her hands over her eyes.
A wave of amazement and amus.e.m.e.nt swept over Miss Fletcher, and she struck her hands together noiselessly. "I _do_ believe in my heart," she exclaimed, "that Hazel Wright is giving Flossie one of those absent treatments they tell about! Well, if I ever in all my born days!"
There was no more work for Miss Fletcher after this, but a restless moving about the room until she saw Hazel bound up from the ground. Then she hurried out of the house and walked over to the tree. Hazel skipped to meet her, her face all alight. "Oh, Miss Fletcher, Flossie wants to be healed by Christian Science. If my mother was only here she could turn to all the places in the Bible where it tells about G.o.d being Love and healing sickness."
Miss Fletcher noted the new expression in the invalid"s usually listless face, and the new light in her eyes.
"I"ll take my Bible," she answered, "and a concordance. I"ll bring them right now. You children go on playing and I"ll find all the references I can, and Flossie and I will read them after you"ve gone."
Miss Fletcher brought her books out under the tree, and with pencil and paper made her notes while the children played with their dolls.
"Let"s have them both your children, Flossie," said Hazel.
"Oh, yes," replied Flossie, "and they"ll both be sick, and you be the doctor and come and feel their pulses. Aunt Hazel has my doll"s little medicine bottles in the house. She"ll tell you where they are."
Hazel paused. "Let"s not play that," she returned, "because--it isn"t fun to be sick and--you"re going to be all done with sickness."
"All right," returned Flossie; but it had been her princ.i.p.al play with her doll, Bernice, who had recovered from such a catalogue of ills that it reflected great credit on her medical man.
"I"ll be the maid," said Hazel, "and you give me the directions and I"ll take the children to drive and to dancing-school and everywhere you tell me."
"And when they"re naughty," returned Flossie, "you bring them to me to spank, because I can"t let my servants punish my children."
Hazel paused again. "Let"s play you"re a Christian Scientist," she said, "and you have a Christian Science maid, then there won"t be any spanking; because if error creeps in, you"ll know how to handle it in mind."
"Oh!" returned Flossie blankly.
But Hazel was fertile in ideas, and the play proceeded with spirit, owing to the lightning speed with which the maid changed to a coachman, and thence to a market-man or a gardener, according to the demands of the situation.
Miss Fletcher, her spectacles well down on her nose, industriously searched out her references and made record of them, her eyes roving often to the white face that was fuller of interest than she had ever seen it.
When four o"clock came, she went back to the house and returned with Flossie"s lap table, which she leaned against the tree trunk. This afternoon lunch for the invalid was always accomplished with much coaxing on Miss Fletcher"s part, and great reluctance on Flossie"s. The little girl took no notice now of what was coming. She was too much engrossed in Hazel"s efforts to induce Miss Fletcher"s maltese cat to allow Bernice to take a ride on his back.
But when the hostess returned from the house the second time, Hazel gave an exclamation. Miss Fletcher was carrying a tray, and upon it was laid out a large doll"s tea-set. It was of white china with gold bands, and when Flossie saw Hazel"s admiration, she exclaimed too.
"This was my tea-set when I was a little girl," said Miss Fletcher, "and I was always very choice of it. Twenty years ago I had a niece your age, Hazel, who used to think it was the best fun in the world to come to aunt Hazel"s and have lunch off her doll"s tea-set. I used to tell her I was going to give it to _her_ little girl if she ever had one."
Both children exclaimed admiringly over the quaint shape of the bowl and pitchers, as Miss Fletcher deposited the tray on her sewing-table.
"When I was a child we didn"t smash up handsome toys the way children do nowadays. They weren"t so easy to get."
"And didn"t your niece ever have a little girl?" asked Flossie, beginning to think that in such a case perhaps these dear dishes might come to be her own.
"Yes, she did," replied Miss Fletcher kindly, and as she looked at the guest"s interested little face her eyes were thoughtful. "I shall give them to her some day."
"Has she ever seen them?" asked Hazel.
"Once. I thought you children must be hungry after your games, and you"d like a little lunch."
This idea was so pleasing to Hazel that Flossie caught her enthusiasm.
"You"ll be the mistress and pour, Flossie, and I"ll be the waitress," she said. "Won"t it be the most _fun_! I suppose, ma"am, you"ll like to have the children come to the table?" she added, with sudden respectfulness of tone.
"Yes," returned Flossie, with elegant languor. "I think it teaches them good manners."
And then the waitress forgot herself so far as to hop up and down; for Miss Fletcher, who had returned to the house, now reappeared bearing a tray of eatables and drinkables.
What a good time the children had, with the sewing-table for a sideboard, and the lap-table fixed firmly across Flossie"s chair.
"Are you sure you aren"t getting too tired, dear?" asked Miss Fletcher of her invalid, doubtfully. "Wouldn"t you rather the waitress poured?"
But Flossie declared she was feeling well, and Hazel looked up eagerly into Miss Fletcher"s eyes and said, "You know she can"t get too tired unless we"re doing wrong."
"Oh, indeed!" returned the hostess dryly. "Then there"s nothing to fear, for she"s doing the rightest kind of right."
When the table was set forth, two small plates heaped high with bread-and-b.u.t.ter sandwiches, a coffee-pot and milk-pitcher of beaten egg and milk, a tea-pot of grape juice, one dish of nuts and another of jelly, the waitress"s eyes spoke so eloquently that Flossie mercifully dismissed her on the spot, and invited a lady of her acquaintance to the feast, who immediately drew up a chair with eager alacrity.
Miss Fletcher seated herself again and looked on with the utmost satisfaction, while the children laughed and ate, and when the sandwich plates and coffee-pot and tea-pot and milk-pitcher were all emptied, she replenished them from the well-furnished sideboard.
"My, I wish I was aunt Hazel"s real little niece!" exclaimed Flossie, enchanted with pouring from the delightful china.
"So do I wish I was," said Hazel, looking around at her hostess with a smile that was returned.
When Hazel sat down to supper at home that evening, she had plenty to tell of the delightful afternoon, which made Mr. Badger and Hannah open their eyes to the widest, although she did not suspect how she was astonishing them.
"I tell you," she added, in describing the luncheon, "we were careful not to break that little girl"s dishes. Oh, I wish you could see them. They"re the most be-_au_tiful you ever saw. They"re so big--big enough for a child"s real ones that she could use herself."
"I judge you did use them," said uncle d.i.c.k.
"Well, I guess we did! Miss Fletcher--she wants me to call her aunt Hazel, uncle d.i.c.k!" The child looked up to observe the effect of this.
He nodded. "Do it, then. Perhaps she"ll forget and give you the dishes."