'It will be an investment,' answered Stella.
'At first you'd better make up your mind to lose four per cent.,' put in Ted.
'No, I won't lose,' she answered confidently. 'You see, you don't know the people, Ted.'
'That just reminds me of what you said once when you were telling me a yarn up in the Moreton Bay fig-tree at Fairacre. It's ages ago, when you were about thirteen——'
'Oh, Ted!—so long ago as that?'
'Well, it's eleven years ago. You used to sit in the fork of the tree with your back against the trunk, with a book; and I would tease you till you told me a story; and sometimes you would make it so creepy I was sorry I asked for it. This time—I remember it well, because it was a week before your father died,' said Ted, lowering his voice—'you looked down towards the sea, and you said there was a ship sailing, sailing away, and at last it came to the strangest country. The people had such small souls that at the Day of Judgment they couldn't be found. The Lord sent squads of angels to look for them, but not one could they fossick out. And there the skeletons had to sit each on its own grave, and the moonlight playing through their bones. That was the only light, and not a blade of grass or a drop of water!'
'Oh, Ted!—are you sure I told you all that?' said Stella incredulously.
'Why, who else could ever think of such things?' returned Ted with assured confidence. 'There was never a sound to be heard but when a big willy-willy went rushing over the valleys—it was all valleys, full of graves, with skeletons sitting on them, waiting for the souls that couldn't be found. When the storms blew, the air was thick with bones, driven here and there, and at last left in heaps, to get together as well as they could. They used to be so tired and bruised for a long time, they could not move. But at last they began to put themselves together. And that was the only time they could speak. "You have taken part of my backbone," one would say to the other; "This rib doesn't belong to me;" "I am all here but my left leg;" "Who has got my skull?" That last was too much for me. I said, if the skull was missing, the skeleton couldn't speak. But you said I knew nothing about the country. I had never been there. And not only so, but the bone of the little toe could speak far better than a skull. That put the "kybosh" on me completely.'
'You have got a curious memory, Ted,' said Stella, who had listened with languid wonder to this recital. 'You never seem to remember much of books you read.'
'No; but you tell me things out of them, and I'll remember fast enough. You'll have to come back to that, Stella—keep a school with only me.... Is that a letter from Larry?'