Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/207

Rh the south window, under the abutilon canopy, and the mysterious crystal was her inseparable play-thing. When she was not holding it up and turning it over and over in the light, she kept it in sight, laying it always on the white spaces in the coverlet, and as far as possible from the scarlet; and I observed that when she was lying still, apparently in a reverie, her eyes were usually fastened upon the stone. We grew familiar with its strange electric and magnetic phenomena, and even amused ourselves by passing it rapidly from hand to hand after it had been heated by friction and by the sunlight.

As our superstitious uneasiness about it wore away, our interest in it diminished, and sometimes for weeks we did not think of it, except when Ally called our attention to its beauty or its mysterious powers. She still persisted in speaking of it as if it were alive, and caressing and loving it as if it could reciprocate all her affection.

"Stonie knows me now," she would often say. "He does not know any of the rest of you; you don't love him. He hardly ever pricks me now; he only purrs on my fingers."

It was an odd thing that Mrs. Allen never felt this sensation. Her nerves were so strong that the powerful influence, whatever it might be, produced no disturbance on the equipoise of her system, Jim was more sensitive to it than any one except Ally herself. He knew instantly on approaching