"I _had_ always admired the shell: a beautiful thing, exquisite in color, and smoothly shaped, like an egg. Baby-Belle told me how her Uncle Ninian had visited the Pacific isles; and once when he was in a boat on some lagoon, he had looked down into the water, down and down, and the water was as clear as if it wasn't there at all. The fishes might have been floating in air, Baby-Belle said he said, and they were all colors: gold and blue and purple and striped; and there were sea ferns and things, and way down, below the fishes and the ferns, was this beautiful shell. So Baby-Belle's Uncle Ninian decided to dive down and get it for his niece, and he did, though the water was much deeper than he'd thought, and he felt his lungs would burst before he regained the surface. When he gave the shell to Baby-Belle, he told her that if she held it to her ear, she would hear exactly the way the surf sounded on the barrier reef beyond the lagoon. "After a while I put the shell to my own ear, and sure enough it seemed as if I could really hear the soft roar of surf on a distant reef; and when my dreams began again, they were all about the cool, clear water of the lagoon and the fishes drifting and the sea ferns waving, and I really believe, I really do, that that shell and the dreams it gave me helped me to recover." "Minnie, you never told me that story before," said Mr. Payton rather indignantly, as he knocked the ashes from his pipe. "Nobody could ever figure out how you'd got typhoid--ever. Not even Papa." "Oh, I still have a few secrets up my sleeve," replied Mrs. Cheever airily. "And the story isn't quite ended, because when I was convalescing, Baby-Belle came to see me. My hair had been cut off short as a boy's--they did that in those days when you had a bad fever--and Baby-Belle was really envious. She resented the poor judgment Fate had shown in making her a girl instead of a boy in the first place. "She picked up the shell--I kept it on my bedside table--and she said: 'You know why I gave you this, Min? I gave it to you because Mamzelle is gone. She's _gone_! Forever! And it's all because of you!' "'Me?' I said, perfectly bewildered, and Baby-Belle said: 'Yes. Because when Mamzelle heard you had typhoid fever, she flew into a panic, she was so scared she'd catch it. Why, she couldn't get away fast enough, and she packed in such a rush that there was a long black stocking hanging out of one end of her suitcase like a tail!' "So we both laughed at that picture, and then Baby-Belle looked sort of worried and she said: 'You know something, Min? When Mamzelle said she was leaving, I couldn't help feeling glad as anything that you'd caught typhoid fever! But only because it chased _her_ away, though, Min; _you_ know that.... But I felt so bad about feeling glad that I thought I'd better give you Uncle Ninian's shell that you always admired so. Then I knew I'd feel all right again. And I did.'