But Colin sat silent.
Over and over again, with a childish persistence, the farmer told how he had sold his farm, how he had come up with every penny he owned, how, little by little, it had all oozed away, and how in disgust he had decided to sell his boat, which would give him just enough money to get back to Missouri.
"But now, Mary," he said, "we can go back and get a better farm than we ever had, and we'll have a house in the village so that the children can go to a good school, and you'll have lots o' friends, and pretty things about you. It's been hard, neighbors, I tell you," he said, looking round; "but the luck has turned at last."
Colin said not a word, but kept his eyes fixed on the table. His host, the mussel-gatherer, whose stone he had been examining, noticed this, but the newcomer was boisterous in his joy. He babbled of the wealth that was his, until if the stone had been a diamond of equal size, it would not have sufficed to have financed his dreams.
But the boy with the instruments on the table before him, said not a word of congratulation or delight. He had only seen the pearl for a moment, but he knew.
With hearty and jovial hospitality, the farmer invited every one in the room to come and stay with him as soon as he was settled down. He would show them, he said, what real life was like on a farm.
Suddenly he stopped.
"Mister!" he said, in an altered voice.
Colin, sitting alone, still beside his testing instruments, did not look up.