Of all the group these two alone, the child and the dog, refused to devote themselves to Lola; the child, after one long look into her eyes, had thrown her arms about the old man's neck and hidden her face on his shoulder; the dog had bared his little teeth in a snarl at the first touch of her hand.
"Quiet, Tony," reproved Mr. Miller sharply, as he changed the dog to the other arm of his chair. "I can't think why he should act so queerly, Miss Barnhelm, nor you, either, Molly," he said as he stroked the child's head lovingly. "You are both tired out, I think, and you must go to bed."
"Will you come upstairs and hear me say my prayers in a little while, grandfather?" asked little Molly in a low voice. "Nurse and mother are there, but I think God can hear me better when you are with me."
[Illustration: LOLA GOES TO KEEP HER APPOINTMENT AT THE STEEL PIER.]
"I will come, of course, Molly." He looked up at Lola with a smile. "This little girl is worried about her father, who is on the ocean, but I have told her that God always considers the prayers of little girls who pray for those they love."
"You believe that?" questioned Lola with something very like a sneer, "or do you think it is the proper thing to tell a child?"
"I believe it," said the old man gently, "or naturally I would not teach it to this little girl. I have told her that God's power is infinite, but that his purpose is not always easy for us to understand. I know, however, that such prayers as hers must do great good to her and to him she prays for. Don't you?"
"No," replied Lola coldly, "I do not." She resented the look of cool inquiry in this man's eye; he was a famous writer, they had told her, an authority on many subjects of which the very names were new to her. Well, he could not study her, or if he tried he would find that she was not the empty-headed creature his rather amused look seemed to say he thought her.
"I know nothing of the kind," she went on calmly, "and I am surprised that a man like you can believe such worn-out old superstitions."
"That need not surprise you, that we believe, this child and I," he said gently. "Belief is so very easy to us. She is very young, and I am very old, and to such belief comes naturally. It is, I think, because the very young are fresh from God's presence and because the very old are drawing nearer to it."