“JACK,” Ruby says very soberly, “I want you to do something for me.”

Crowning joy has come at last to Ruby. Mrs. Kirke’s expected letter, backed by another from her son, has come, inviting the Thornes to spend the first week of the New Year with them. And now Ruby’s parents have departed to pay some flying visits farther north, leaving their little girl, at Mrs. Kirke’s urgent request, to await their return in Greenock.

“For Jack’s sake I should be so glad if you could allow her,” Jack’s mother had said. “It makes everything so bright to have a child’s presence in the house, and Jack and I have been sad enough since Walter died.”Sad enough! Ay, in all truth so they had. Few but Jack could have told how sad.

“Fire away, little Ruby red,” is Jack’s rejoinder.

They are in the smoking-room, Jack stretched in one easy chair, Ruby curled up in another. Jack has been away in dreamland, following with his eyes the blue wreaths of smoke floating upwards from his pipe to the roof; but now he comes back to real life—and Ruby.

“This is it,” Ruby explains. “You know the day we went down to Inverkip, dad and I? Well, we went to see mamma’s grave—my own mamma, I mean. Dad gave me a shilling before he went away, and I thought I should like to buy some flowers and put them there. It looked so lonely, and as if everybody had forgotten all about her being buried there. And she was my own mamma,” adds the little girl, a world of pathos in her young voice. “So there’s nobody but me to do it. So, Jack, would you mind?”

“Taking you?” exclaims the young man. “Of course I will, old lady. It’ll be a jolly little excursion, just you and I together. No, not exactly jolly,” remembering the intent of their journey, “but very nice. We’ll go to-morrow, Ruby. Luckily the yard’s having holidays just now, so I can do as I like. As for the flowers, don’t you bother about them. I’ll get plenty for you to do as you like with.”

“Oh, you are good!” cries the little girl, rising and throwing her arms round the young man’s neck. “I wish you weren’t so old, Jack, and I’d marry you when I grew up.”

“But I’m desperately old,” says Jack, showing all his pretty, even, white teeth in a smile. “Twenty-six if I’m a day. I shall be quite an old fogey when you’re a nice young lady, Ruby red. Thank you all the same for the honour,” says Jack, twirling his moustache and smiling to himself a little. “But you’ll find some nice young squatter in the days to come who’ll have two words to say to such an arrangement.”

“I won’t ever like anybody so well as you, anyway,” decides Ruby, resolutely. In the days to come Jack often laughingly recalls this asseveration to her. “And I don’t think I’ll ever get married. I wouldn’t like to leave dad.”

The following day sees a young man and a child passing through the quaint little village of Inverkip, lying about six miles away from the busy seaport of Greenock, on their way to the quiet churchyard which encircles the little parish kirk. As Ruby has said, it looks painfully lonely this winter afternoon, none the less so that the rain and thaw have come and swept before them the snow, save where it lies in discoloured patches here and there about the churchyard wall.

“I know it by the tombstone,” observes Ruby, cheerfully, as they close the gates behind them. “It’s a grey tombstone, and mamma’s name below a lot of others. This is it, I think,” adds the child, pausing before a rather desolate-looking grey slab. “Yes, there’s her name at the foot, ‘Janet Stuart,’ and dad says that was her favourite text that’s underneath—‘Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so come, Lord Jesus.’ I’ll put down the flowers. I wonder,” says Ruby, looking up into Jack’s face with a sudden glad wonder on her own, “if mamma can look down from heaven, and see you and me here, and be glad that somebody’s putting flowers on her grave at last.”

“She will have other things to be glad about, I think, little Ruby,” Jack Kirke says very gently. “But she will be glad, I am sure, if she sees us—and I think she does,” the young man adds reverently—“that through all those years her little girl has not forgotten her.”

“But I don’t remember her,” says Ruby, looking up with puzzled eyes. “Only dad says that before she died she said that he was to tell me that she would be waiting for me, and that she had prayed the Lord Jesus that I might be one of His jewels. And I’m not! I’m not!” cries Ruby, with a little choke in her voice. “And if I’m not, the Lord Jesus will never gather me, and I’ll never see my mamma again. Even up in heaven she might p’raps feel sorry if some day I wasn’t there too.”

“I know,” Jack says quickly. He puts his arm about the little girl’s shoulders, and his own heart goes out in a great leap to this child who is wondering, as he himself not so very long ago, in a strange mazed way, wondered too, if even ’midst heaven’s glories another will “feel sorry” because those left behind will not one far day join them there. “I felt that too,” the young man goes on quietly. “But it’s all right now, dear little Ruby red. Everything seemed so dark when Wat died, and I cried out in my misery that the God who could let such things be was no God for me. But bit by bit, after a terrible time of doubt, the mists lifted, and God seemed to let me know that He had done the very best possible for Wat in taking him away, though I couldn’t understand just yet why. The one thing left for me to do now was to make quite sure that one day I should meet Wat again, and I couldn’t rest till I made sure of that. It’s so simple, Ruby, just to believe in the dear Lord Jesus, so simple, that when at last I found out about it, I wondered how I could have doubted so long. I can’t speak about such things,” the young fellow adds huskily, “but I felt that if you feel about your mother as I did about Wat, that I must help you. Don’t you see, dear, just to trust in Christ with all your heart that He is able to save you, and He will. It was only for Wat’s sake that I tried to love Him first; but now I love Him for His own.”

It has cost Ruby’s friend more than the child knows to make even this simple confession of his faith. But I think that in heaven’s morning Jack’s crown will be all the brighter for the words he spoke to a doubting little girl on a never-to-be-forgotten winter’s day. For it is said that even those who but give to drink of a cup of cold water for the dear Christ’s sake shall in no wise lose their reward.

“I love you, Jack,” is all Ruby says, with a squeeze of her friend’s hand. “And if I do see mamma in heaven some day, I’ll tell her how good you’ve been to me. Oh! Jack, won’t it be nice if we’re all there together, Wat and you, and dad and mamma and me?”

Jack does not answer just for a moment. The young fellow’s heart has gone out with one of those sudden agonizing rushes of longing to the brother whom he has loved, ay, and still loves, more than life itself. It must be better for Wat—of that Jack with all his loyal heart feels sure; but oh, how desolately empty is the world to the brother Jack left behind! One far day God will let they two meet again; that too Jack knows; but oh, for one hour of the dear old here and now! In the golden streets of the new Jerusalem Jack will look into the sorrowless eyes of one whom God has placed for ever above all trouble, sorrow, and pain; but the lad’s heart cries out with a fierce yearning for no glorified spirit with crown-decked brow, but the dear old Wat with the leal home love shining out of his eyes, and the warm hand-clasp of brotherly affection. Fairer than all earthly music the song of the redeemed may ring throughout the courts of heaven; but sweeter far in those fond ears will sound the well-loved tones which Jack Kirke has known since he was a child.

“Yes, dear,” Jack says, with a swift, sudden smile for the eager little face uplifted to his, “it will be nice. So we must make sure that we won’t disappoint them, mustn’t we?”

Another face than Ruby’s uprises before the young man’s eyes as he speaks, the face of the brother whose going had made all the difference to Jack’s life; but who, up in heaven, had brought him nearer to God than he ever could have done on earth. Not a dead face, as Jack had looked his last upon it, but bright and loving as in the dear old days when the world seemed made for those two, who dreamed such great things of the wonderful “may be” to come. But now God has raised Wat higher than even his airy castles have ever reached—to heaven itself, and brought Jack, by the agony of loss, very near unto Himself. No, Jack determines, he must make sure that he will never disappoint Wat.

The red sun, like a ball of fire, is setting behind the dark, leafless tree-tops when at last they turn to go, and everything is very still, save for the faint ripple of the burn through the long flats of field as it flows out to meet the sea. Fast clasped in Jack’s is Ruby’s little hand; but a stronger arm than his is guiding both Jack and Ruby onward. In the dawning, neither Wat nor Ruby’s mother need fear disappointment now.

“I’m glad I came,” says Ruby in a very quiet little voice as the train goes whizzing home. “There was nobody to come but me, you see, me and dad, for dad says that mamma had no relations when he married her. They were all dead, and she had to be a governess to keep herself. Dad says that he never saw any one so brave as my own mamma was.”

“See and grow up like her, then, little Ruby,” Jack says with one of his bright, kindly smiles. “It’s the best sight in the world to see a brave woman; at least I think so,” adds the young man, smiling down into the big brown eyes looking up into his.He can hardly help marvelling, even to himself, at the situation in which he now finds himself. How Wat would have laughed in the old days at the idea of Jack ever troubling himself with a child, Jack, who had been best known, if not exactly as a child-hater, at least as a child-avoider. What has come over him nowadays? Is it Wat’s mantle dropped from the skies, the memory of that elder brother’s kindly heart, which has softened the younger’s, and made him “kind,” as Ruby one long gone day had tried to be, to all whom he comes in contact with? For Wat’s sake Jack had first tried to do right; ay, but now it is for a greater than that dear brother’s, even for Christ’s. Like Mr. Valiant-for-Truth of old renown, Wat has left as sword the legacy of his great and beautiful charity to the young brother who is to succeed him in the pilgrimage.

“Jack,” Ruby whispers that evening as she kisses her friend good night, “I’m going to try—you know. I don’t want to disappoint mamma.”

Up in heaven I wonder if the angels were glad that night. God was, I know. And Jack. There is an old, old verse ringing in my ears, none the less true that he who spoke it in the far away days has long since gone home to God: “And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.”

Surely, in the dawning of that “summer morn” Jack’s crown will not be a starless one.