time. Why, I declare, it is nearly sunset. You don't know it,
children, but the bottom of the tropic sea has colors in it as beautiful
as the lights in that sky. The sea-bottom, where the diver is apt to find
pearl shells, is covered with all sorts of sea growths--sponges twelve
feet high, coral cups like inverted mushrooms, sea-fans twenty feet
broad."

As the old diver talked, the girls could see the magic coral wreaths,
glowing rose color and crimson, the tall ferns and sea flowers that waved
with the movement of the water as the earth flowers move to the stirring
of the wind. And there in the land of the mermaids, hidden between
wonderful shells of mother-of-pearl, lie the jewels that are the purest
and most beautiful in the world.

Madge's chin was in her hands. She did not hear the old captain get up
and say good-bye. She was wishing, with all her heart, that she, too,
might go down to the bottom of the sea to view its treasures.

"Madge," Phil interrupted her reverie, "Captain Jules is going."

Madge put her soft, warm hands into the big man's hard, powerful ones.
"Good-bye," she said gratefully. "There is something I wish to tell you,
but I won't until another time."

Miss Jenny Ann stared thoughtfully after the giant figure as Captain
Jules left the houseboat and strode up the shore in search of a small
skiff to take him home.

"You girls have made an unusual friend," she said slowly to Madge. "In
many ways Captain Jules is rough. He may be uneducated in the wisdom of
schools and books, but he is a great man with a great heart."

Before Madge went to bed that night she wrote Tom Curtis. She told him
how sorry they all were that he could not come at once to Cape May. She
also described the day's adventures. She made as light of their accident
as possible, but she ended her letter by asking Tom if he would not send
her a book about pearl fishing.

CHAPTER X

THE GOODY-GOODY YOUNG MAN

"Philip Holt has come, Madge," announced Phyllis Alden a few days later.
"He is staying at one of the hotels until Mrs. Curtis and Tom arrive to
open their cottage. He has already been calling on a number of Mrs.
Curtis's friends here. Now he has condescended to come to see us. Miss
Jenny Ann says we must invite him to luncheon; so close that book, if you
please, and come help us to entertain him. I am sure you will be _so_
pleased to see him."

Madge frowned, but closed her book obediently. "What a bore, Phil!