"Imagine a lobster peeking!" Mr. Evringham strained his eyes to their widest and stared at Jewel, who shouted.
"That's just the way the sand-fleas look," she exclaimed.
"Well," remarked the broker, recovering his ordinary expression, "you may as well remain a little girl, so far as that goes. You can creep around among the coral and peek at pearls at Tiffany's."
"What's Tiffany's?"
"Something you will take more interest in when you're older." The broker shook his head. "The difference is that the lobster wouldn't care to wear the coral and pearls. An awful thought comes over me once in a while, Jewel," he added, after a pause.
The child looked up at him seriously. "It can be met," she answered quickly.
He smiled. He understood her peculiar expressions in these days. "Hardly, I think," he answered. "It is this: that you are going to grow up."
Jewel looked off at the blue water. "Well," she replied at last hopefully, "you're grown up, you know, and perhaps you'll like me then just as much as I do you."
He squeezed the little hand he held. "We'll hope so," he said.
"And besides, grandpa," she went on, for she had heard him express the same dread before, "we'll be together every day, so perhaps you won't notice it. Sometimes I've tried to see a flower open. I've known it was going to do it, and I've been just bound I'd see it; and I've watched and watched, but I never could see when the leaves spread, no matter how much I tried, and yet it would get to be a rose, somehow. Perhaps some day somebody'll say to you, 'Why, Jewel's a grown up lady, isn't she?' and you'll say, 'Is she, really? Why, I hadn't noticed it.'"