Oh, Johnny! isn't that just
elegant? Did you ever see such beautiful things? I don't think the
President's wife has no handsomer than them!"

John frowned a little at these ecstasies, and glanced at the Skipper;
but the Skipper was apparently absorbed in polishing the Royal Tritons,
and showing them to Mr, Scraper, who regarded them with disdainful eyes,
while his fingers twitched to lay hold of them.

"Why, Lena, you don't want to be looking at those things!" the boy
urged. "See! here are the shells! Here are the real ones, not made up
into truck, but just themselves. Oh, oh! Lena, look!"

The Skipper was coming forward with a shell in his hand of exquisite
colour and shape.

"Perhaps the young lady like to see this?" he said. "This the Voluta
Musica,--a valuable shell, young lady. You look, and see the lines of
the staff on the shell, so? Here they run, you see! The mermaids under
the water, they have among themselves no sheet-music, so on shells they
must read it. Can the young lady follow the notes if she take the shell
in her hand?"

He laid the lovely thing in the girl's hand, and marked how the polished
lip and the soft pink palm wore the same tender shade of rose; but he
said nothing of this, for he was not Franci.

Lena examined the shell curiously. "It does look like music!" she said.
"But there ain't really any notes, are there? Not like our notes, I
mean. If there was, I should admire to see how they sounded on the reed
organ. It would make a pretty pin, if 't wasn't so big!"

She was about to hand the shell back quietly--she looked like a
rose-leaf in moonlight, this pretty Lena, but she was practical, and had
little imagination--but John caught it from her with a swift yet
timorous motion.

"I want to hear it," he said, his pleading eyes on the Skipper's face.
"I want to hear what it says!"

The dark man nodded and smiled; but a moment later, seeing the lean
fingers of Mr. Endymion Scraper about to clutch the treasure, he took it
quietly in his own hand again, and turned to the old man.

"Gentleman spoke to me?" he inquired, blandly.

The gentleman had not spoken, but had made a series of gasps and grunts,
expressive of extreme impatience and eagerness.

"That's a poor specimen," he cried now, eying the shell greedily, "a
very poor specimen! What do you expect to get for it, hey?"

"A perfect specimen!" replied the Skipper, calmly. "The gentleman has
but to look at it closer"--and he held i