Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/219

Rh arms she clapped her hands and bounded to open the door.

"Oh, I 'm so glad, so glad!" she exclaimed, jumping up and down, and springing first to one, then to another. "I thought Stonie would help you."

"You foolish Pussy," exclaimed Dr. Miller, "we 've got a hundred stones just like him."

"No," said Ally, gravely, "you have not got any just like him. There is not one among them all just like him."

"By Jove, she 's right," muttered the Doctor, as we slowly set down our loads; "there is n't one just like hers."

"I told you so. I said she knew all about them," whispered Jim, under his breath.

We spent the whole evening in sorting and arranging the stones; they seemed more and more beautiful the more we studied them. There were no two alike; very few of them were perfect in shape, but they were all of superb colors. There was not one, however, which was so large, so regularly shaped and beautifully tinted as Ally's Stonie. As we held up crystal after crystal, exclaiming, "This is a perfect one!" "Oh, this is the most beautiful of all!" Ally would place hers by the side of it, and without saying one word, look an arch interrogation. When the last crystal was laid in its place, she said, quietly:—