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Page 8
"All of 'em!"
"Everything _there_?"
"Yes, yes!"
"And this one, too?"
"For the land's sake, yes!" averred Grammer of the choice contents of
the fourth shelf. She was baking pies and found herself a bit impatient
of this new game.
"Well, that's all, now!" and he dismissed her, not daring to inquire as
to the lower shelf. He had seen the way things were going--a sickening
way. But, having shrewdly stopped at the lower shelf, having prevented
Grammer from saying that those valuable objects were also hers, he had
still the right to come into his own. If the shell mightn't belong to
her it might belong to him; therefore it did belong to him; which, as
logic, is not so lame as it sounds. At least it is a workaday average.
It occurred to him once to ask for the shell bluntly. But reason forbade
this. It was not conceivable that any one having so celestial a treasure
would willingly part with it. When a thing was yours you took it, with
dignity, but quietly.
During the remainder of his stay he was not conspicuously an occupant of
the front room. No day passed that he did not contrive at least one look
at his wonderful shell, but he craftily did not linger there, nor did he
ever utter words about the thing, though these often crowded perilously
to his lips.
A later day brought a letter to Grammer, and Gramper delightedly let it
be known that the doctor at Wellsville had brought little Bean a fine
new baby brother. Bean himself was not delighted at this. He had
suffered the ministrations of that same doctor and he could imagine no
visit of his to result in a situation at all pleasant to any one
concerned. If he had brought a baby it was doubtless not a baby that
people would care to have around the house. He was not cheered when told
that he might now go home.
He meant to stay on, and said so.
But the second day brought another letter that had a curious effect on
Gramper and Grammer. Grammer cried, and Gramper told him with a strange,
grave manner that now he must go. He knew that he was not told why;
something, he overheard them agree, needn't be told "just yet." This was
rather exciting and reconciled him to leaving.
He crept softly down the narrow stairs that night, alleging, when called
to by Grammer, the need of a drink of water. When he returned his hands
trembled about the shell. Swiftly it went to the bottom of his small
box, his extra clothing, all his little belongings, being packed
cleverly about it.
They kissed him many times the next morning, and when he looked back
under the trees to where the old couple stood in front of the little
weather-beaten house he saw that Grammer was crying again. His
conscience hurt him a little; he wondered how they would get along
without the shell. But they couldn't have it, because it was his shell.
The stage turned after a bit, and suddenly there was Gramper at the
roadside, breathless after his run across a corner of the east forty.
Instantly he was in the clutch of a great fear; the loss had been
discovered. He sat frozen, waiting.
But Gramper only flourished the napkin-ring, and humorously taunted him
with not having packed everything, after all. The stage drove on, but
for the next mile his breathing was jerky.
Toward the end of the day-long ride--Gramper couldn't be running after
them _that_ far--he surrendered to his exultation, opened the box and
drew out the shell, fondling it, fascinated anew by its varying sheen,
excited by the freedom with which he now might touch it. Again he was
the sole passenger and he called to the old driver, to whom nothing at
all seemed to have happened because of his filching fruit.
"See my shell I found at Grammer's!"
But the old man was blind to beauty. He turned a careless eye upon the
treasure, turned it off again with a formless grunt that might have been
perfunctory praise, and resumed his half-muttered talk to himself,
marked by little oblique nods of triumph--some endless dispute that he
seemed to hold with an invisible opponent.
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