“Full of the joy of life, Welcome, full of the springtime,” replied the doctor, happily. “Let them alone. I can stand it. Give me some more pearl dust elixir, Miss Edwina.”
“Pearls stand for tears, really and truly,” said Dorothy, seriously. “I’ve always heard that. The night before the king was killed, Marguerite of Valois dreamed all her diamonds had turned to pearls, our history teacher told us.”
“Stop it,” Ted insisted. “Can’t you see how melancholius-like Polly and Ruth are looking? I shall be afraid, pretty soon, to touch a pearl with a ten-foot pole, even if I find one in my oyster stew.”
“Don’t mind them, doctor,” said Polly, cheerfully. “The pearl is my birthstone, and I love it dearly, and you won’t find me weeping often. See, it’s past sundown now. We’re going to set fire to that pile of driftwood down on the beach, and toast marshmallows around it, while the glee club holds forth.”
“Just one minute,” called the doctor, as they rose. “I want you to look at this.”
The girls gathered around his chair, as he drew a tiny packet from his pocket, wrapped in tissue paper, and unfolding it disclosed several unset pearls, large as peas, and rarely beautiful.
“Do you carry them with you like that?” asked Kate.
“Just like that,” replied the doctor, blithely, and he let them roll about in the palm of his hand. “I bought them at the pearl harvest, and I like to have them close to me. They say that Napoleon, when he sat and dreamed of the conquest of the world, loved to feel unset pearls slip through his fingers. So, why not I?”
“Oh, they are lovely!” Polly touched them lingeringly. “Isn’t it too bad that such things should be shut up in a shell at the bottom of the ocean?”
Ruth was calling to them to hurry, for the marshmallows were waiting to be cooked, and the fire was started, and as they walked down to the beach the doctor quoted: