Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/94

 said another, 'you can have it cut into beads to wear; it is a brave piece.'

Musa had said nothing, but she got old Andrea's boat, that day, and rowed out to where the water was deep, and purple in colour, yet transparent as glass in its great depth; and there, being all alone, leaned over the boat's side and dropped the coral into the water, and watched it sink down, down, down, and join the other coral that grew there, far below.

'It will be happier,' she had said to herself; 'it is not where it came from, I dare say, but it is the best I can do.'

It had seemed to her that the coral would be so glad to be once more in those calm, cool and shadowy deeps where never burned the sun, and never sound was heard.

When she had reached land afterwards and met all the other children, and the giver of the coral amongst them, and they asked her for it, she had answered, 'I have put it back into the sea,' and they had screamed at her; and the fisher-lad sworn at her and tried to give her a blow: this was all her gratitude! they cried in offence and wrath.

Questioned, she could not very well have told why she had done it. Only she pitied