Jibby Jones knew all this; we couldn’t fool him about it because his father had told him; but we did try to fool him about another part of it. That was about getting mussel shells that had real pearls in them--the pearls the women wear for jewelry. Tad was the one that tried to fool him about that. I guess Jibby asked Tad how they got the pearls, because Tad’s father was a pearl-buyer. “Well, that’s a pretty hard job, Jibby,” Tad told him. “Not many people want to try diving for pearls in the old Mississippi, I can tell you! No, sir!” “Why?” Jibby asked. “I never heard of sharks in the Mississippi, or alligators this far north.” “Well, I should say not!” said Tad. “If there were sharks and alligators here, too, nobody would ever dive for pearls. No, sir! It isn’t sharks or alligators, it’s mud!” “Mud?” Jibby asked. “Yes, sir! Mud!” Tad told him. “Common old Mississippi River mud. That’s why so few hunt pearls; that’s why pearls are so high-priced. The mud is awful. The mussels with real pearls in them don’t lie right on top of the mud like common button-shell mussels; they burrow down in the mud. The minute a mussel feels a pearl beginning to grow in it, it begins to burrow.” Of course, Skippy and Wampus and I could hardly keep from shouting out loud when Tad said all this nonsense, because there wasn’t a true word in it, but Jibby Jones just stared at Tad through his spectacles and believed it all. Or we thought he did. “I should think they could dredge a little deeper and get them,” Jibby said. “Dredge deeper?” said Tad, because he did not know just what to say to that. “Pshaw!” Skippy put in. “Dredge deeper! That _would_ be a nice thing to do, wouldn’t it? And the minute the mussel felt the dredge, it would spit out the pearl and that pearl would be lost forever. You can’t dredge for pearl mussels, Jibby.” “Of course not!” said Tad. “You have to dive for them. You--you--” Tad had to think quick to think up some ridiculous thing to tell Jibby, but Tad was a good one at that and he did it! Yes, sir! “You have to do the only way it can be done, if you want to get pearls,” he said. “You have to nose them out.” He stopped short and looked at Jibby’s nose. “Why, you’d make the finest kind of pearl-diver yourself, Jibby,” he said. “You’ve got a splendid nose for it. You’ve got the best nose I ever saw for pearl-diving in the Mississippi.” “Do you think so?” Jibby asked, as pleased as pie. “I know so,” Tad told him. “You’ll know so, too, when I tell you how the divers have to get the pearl-bearing shells. There’s only one way. The pearl-bearing mussel is the scariest thing in the world; a rabbit is brave alongside of a mussel that has a pearl in it. The slightest hard thing frightens a pearl mussel half to death and starts it digging deeper into the mud, and then you never can get it.” “They’re timid?” asked Jibby Jones as if he understood.