“To protect her soft body, friend Mrs. Oyster’s mantle produces a shell of lime which grows by being enlarged around the edge. The high point on the left valve is called the beak. If you will scrub her shell with a brush to-morrow you will see lines running around the beak in the same direction as the margin. These are called ‘lines of growth.’ By them oystermen can tell the age of the shellfish.”
“How strange!” said Willis thoughtfully. “Tree trunks also show lines of growth.”
“Where did you come from?” asked Willis of Mrs. Oyster.
“As I have lived most of my life within this narrow shell,” she answered with a cast-down air, “I have no idea where I came from nor where I now am. Shall I tell you the story of my life?”
“Yes, do, please. It must be interesting. You are such an odd creature.”
“The first thing I remember,” said Mrs. Oyster after she had drawn a full breath, “is that I was a tiny bit of white mucus, or egg, as people say, swimming gayly around with my brothers and sisters in my mother’s shell. It was worse than in the case of the old woman who lived in a shoe. There were two or three thousand of us—maybe more. At any rate there were so many of us that our poor mother never had time to count us. But she was one who never worried. To keep us from getting lost she kept us in by closing her shell tight. That let her get no food. With a true mother’s spirit she fed us on the substance of her own body until she became very poor.”
“Beg pardon,” said Book. “Let me explain to our friend. At that time the mucus within the shell in which the young oysters swim looks milky. The old oyster, who is said to be in the milk, is then unfit to eat.”
“By the time two weeks had rolled around,” went on Mrs. Oyster, “things in our house began to turn very dark in color and our mother received a prompt message from Dame Nature saying that she must turn us out of her house and home. Poor mother! She knew that Dame Nature’s orders must be obeyed or death to the whole family would come. So she bade us good-bye, gave us a bit of advice, and opened the door. Knowing nothing of the size of the world and the things which happen outside of a shell, and thinking that we were going out only for a little romp, we in one voice assured her that we would not go very far.
“Eagerly we rushed out, to find that thousands of mothers on that same oyster bank were also just expelling their little ones. I became lost from my brothers and sisters. The water was so full of myriads of babies like myself that it took all of my attention to simply keep out of the way of the crowd. The oyster babies all looked so much alike that I lost hope of ever knowing one of my brothers again. Indeed, I could scarcely tell which was myself. Our mothers were down deep, but we rose near the surface where we could see the beautiful blue sky.”
“Did you find anything to eat?” asked Willis with great concern.