“Let me see,” mused the doctor. “Are pearls alive? I’ve wondered that myself. The scientists tell us, though, that a pearl is a disease of the oyster, and others say it is only a grain of sand that has slipped inside the shell and irritates the mollusc, so it wraps it about with a secretion of its own that hardens and, after a while, you have the pearl. The Chinese open oyster shells and slip inside tiny images of Buddha, and the oyster covers them with mother-of-pearl.”
“Oh, Polly, don’t you know how we studied last year about the Malays, and their pearl legend?” exclaimed Ted, eagerly. “They say at the full of the moon the pearl oyster rises to the surface of the water and opens its shell, and a dew drop falls into it, and is crystallized. And they say the pearl is colored by the weather at the time it was born. If the night is clear, the pearl is perfect, and if it is cloudy, the pearl will be opalescent and dim, and if there’s a flash of lightning, the shell shuts up instantly and the pearl will be dwarfed.”
“It makes me think of the Polynesian way of catching pearls,” said the doctor. “They send out a long boat at sunrise, a canoe, with some old tribesman playing a weird, plaintive melody on a sort of flute, to scare away evil spirits. Young girls are chosen to dive for the shells, generally the fairest and purest in the village and they poise themselves in the prow of the canoe and dive just as the sun rises.”
“I shall try it to-morrow morning,” said Polly promptly, her eyes dancing with mischief. “Ted and Sue shall play on their mandolins for me, and I will dive for pearls.”
“And you dare to call me vain,” teased Isabel. “I guess if anyone is to dive, I will.”
“Let’s all dive,” suggested Kate, the peacemaker, laughing. “Tell us some more, please, doctor, and don’t mind these giddy creatures.”
Ruth leaned forward, reflectively, her eyes dreamy and full of thought.
“Polly,” she said, “didn’t Mary Stuart love pearls? Didn’t she always carry a rosary of pearls with her, and didn’t we read some place that it was found clasped in her hands after she was killed?”
“Here, child, stop talking about such gloomy things,” Ted interposed, briskly, lifting the tall pitcher of fruit lemonade. “May I pour you another glass, doctor? It’s delicious. Polly dissolved some pearl dust in it, and dreamed she was Cleopatra.”
“I never heard sech talk in all my born days, doctah, I never did,” exclaimed Aunty Welcome, putting her head out rebukingly. “Ain’t dey a lot ob crazy creeturs, sah?”