“I should like to buy a jewel from the great chief, ‘He-who-walks-bedizened,’” said Raymond, his cheek flushed, his ardent eyes afire. “There would be a peculiar interest to tell abroad that this was the necklace of the ‘Jewel King.’”
The Fox flashed an aggrieved and upbraiding glance upon the Terrapin. Had they come hither to chaffer indeed of beads, when the trail to Choté lay open, and by the utmost arts the sages of all the towns could not thence divert this wayward soldier?
“How much?” demanded “He-who-walks-bedizened.”
He pursed up his lips, canted his head backward, and set his eyes a-twinkle under their lowered lids.
Raymond’s heart beat fast. He had all the sensitive pride of a poor man, highly placed socially. He would not for all the world have offered her the trifling personal ornament within his means,—such a compliment as Mervyn might well have paid. He tingled with jubilance at the thought of an actual munificence, which her father could not appropriately forbid her to accept because it was an aboriginal curio, costing so disproportionately to its beauty and value.
He laid a guinea on the table.
“La-a!” bleated the Terrapin, in the extremity of scorn.
Another guinea, and still another, and yet the Indian shook his head. The Fox, albeit his eyes gloated upon the gold, as if it appealed to an appetite independent of his individuality, growled out an undertone of remonstrance which the Terrapin heeded no more than if he had not heard.
Money slips fast through the fingers of a poor man of good station, but Raymond was schooled to a modicum of prudence by the urgency of his desire to possess the gems. Realizing that the demands of Tus-ka-sah would be limited only by his supposed capacity to pay and his willingness to part with his gold, he called a halt lest these, being over-estimated, frustrate the project that had become insistently, eagerly precious to him.
“Let the great chief name the price of his necklace,” he suggested a trifle timorously, fearing a sum beyond the possibility of his wildest extravagance.