Page:Ballinger Price--Us and the Bottle Man.djvu/82

Rh while you were sailing to the Port of Stars. Come now to supper, my dear."

So I got up very stiffly, for I felt weak and dizzy still, and went with her. I said:

"I'm sorry, Mother, that after all I could n't bring you any of the jewels."

Whereupon she laughed again and said something about "Cornelia" which I am too modest to repeat, but which, being scholars, you will know by heart, and said that she was glad enough to have me back at all.

Sirs, you cannot think how beautiful our little dining-room looked to me, with the old brass-handled highboy in the corner and the pots of flowers on the sill—far more beautiful than the fretted golden towers and gem-girdled walls of the City under the Sea.

So take my advice, young sirs, the advice of a man many years older than you bold young blades: don't you ever go listening to a half-breed Peruvian that comes slinking to your window, no matter how enticing may be his tales of treasure.

Your most faithful

"Do you think he dreamed it?" Jerry said. 68