Just then Jibby started to come up. He wiggled and squirmed himself onto his knees and staggered to his feet. After he began to wiggle, we could see nothing but muddy water, and when he stood up his face and head were one mass of soft mud. It dripped from him and ran from him, but he just put his face over the side of the boat and opened his mouth and let a mussel shell fall inside. “Catch it!” he gasped; “catch it!”--as if it was a rabbit or something that could jump and run, and then he ducked down and sloshed water over his head until he was as clean as any one could ever get in that old slough water. He came up smiling. “Well, I got one!” he drawled triumphantly. “I hope it is a big pearl. I hope it is big enough to sell for enough money to let father stay here the rest of the summer. That’s what I want it for. Because I like you fellows. You are all so helpful and friendly.” I’ll say I felt ashamed then. So did Tad and so did Skippy. I guess Wampus did, too. We all did. We did not know what to say. But Jibby, naked as could be, was in the boat now and he picked up the shell. “I hope it did not have time to get rid of the pearl,” he said. “I hope I did not frighten it too much; I hit it rather hard with my nose. Let me have your knife, Wampus.” Wampus had a big knife, a regular frog-stabber. “Jibby--listen!” Tad said, but Jibby was opening the mussel. He seemed to know how. I suppose he had opened oysters in the Seine or somewhere; he never told us. He slid the knife between the two valves of the shell of the mussel, and cut the muscle part, and the shell fell open. “It looks like quite a good one,” was the next thing we heard Jibby Jones say, just as matter-of-fact as if he was talking about a dictionary or an apple. We all stood up, then, and looked. “Merry Christmas! Mer-ry Christmas! And a Hap-py New Year!” Tad exclaimed. “Well, what do you know about that!” Right there in the shell was the biggest, pinkest, glisteningest, roundest pearl I ever saw in my life! No, I’ll say it was twice as big as any pearl I ever saw! “A thousand dollars!” Tad cried. “That’s worth a thousand dollars if it is worth a cent! I know! My father buys them.” We were all crazy with excitement except Jibby Jones. He took it quite calmly. “I’m glad it is a thousand-dollar one,” he said. “Now father can stay on Birch Island the rest of the summer.” And that was about all he ever said about the pearl, even when Tad’s father paid twelve hundred dollars for it. Wampus did ask Jibby if he didn’t expect to go back and dive for a lot more pearls. We thought he would say he meant to. “I think not,” Jibby Jones said. “You see, Tad says the pearl-divers are apt to wear their noses down to a snub, bumping them into the shells, and I wouldn’t like to do that. My nose is the only nose in our family that is like Grandfather Parmenter’s and I wouldn’t like to wear it down to a pug.” CHAPTER III THE CLIMBING RABBIT