I am wild with delight to know that you have decided to come out to America for a visit. I showed your letter at once to Dora and Mr. Marlin, and they absolutely insist that you come here as their guest. You will, won't you? You old dear! You'll have to, else you won't see me—so there! You see, we're on an island in the Florida Keys, and it's ever so far from the mainland, and there's no other place on it to stay except with us. I wonder, I wonder if you'll know me? I'm not the little Polly I was, you know.
Oh, guardy, it's simply wonderful here! The house is really a castle, and it's built mostly of coral, and is so pretty; and the foliage is a dream—the whole island, and it's really an awfully big one, is just like a huge garden. And, too, it's just like a little world all of your own. The servants are mostly negroes, with pickaninnies running around, and they live in jolly little bungalows, ever and ever so many of them, that peep out of the trees at you everywhere you go. And then there is the aquarium. It's Mr. Marlin's hobby. I couldn't begin to describe it. I never knew such beautiful and wonderful and queer creatures existed in the sea.
Dora's a dear, of course. I'm sure you'll lose your heart to her at once. And I've already grown so fond of Mr. Marlin, and the more so, perhaps, because Dora is frightfully worried about him. I am afraid there is something very serious the matter with his mind, though a great deal of the time he appears to be quite normal. I don't understand it, of course, because it is all about the financial conditions in the world; but anyway—
Paul Cremarre stopped reading aloud abruptly. There was a moment of silence while his eyes swept swiftly on to the end of the paragraph.
"Well?" inquired Captain Francis Newcombe. "What's the matter? Have you lost your place?"
The Frenchman drew in his breath sharply.
"Bon Dieu!" he exclaimed excitedly. "Listen to this! It is the lamp of Aladdin! It is the Isle of Croesus! We are rich! It is superb! It is magnificent! Listen! I read again:
—he has a great sum of money in banknotes here; half a million dollars, he said. He showed it to me. It was hard to believe there was so much. Why, you could just make a little bundle of it and put it under your arm. I asked him why he had it here, and he patted it and smiled at me, and told me it was the only safe thing to do. And then he tried to explain a lot of things to me about money that I couldn't understand at all.
Paul Cremarre looked up, and waved the letter about jubilantly.
"Yes, yes!" he cried. "I am awake! See! I pinch myself! It is amazing! In banknotes! In American money! That is valuable, eh? And a little bundle that one could put under one's arm!"