"Look," said Grizzel, holding out her hand with the stone in it, "I
have rubbed a bit off one side at last. If I rub long enough it will
come bright all over."
A small, roughly eight-sided crystal lay in the palm of her hand. Six
sides were dull and colourless, the remaining two sides were clear and
transparent.
"I rubbed my bit off exactly opposite the bit that was clean already,"
she went on, "so that I could look through it at the sun." She turned
the crystal over and held it up as she spoke. A dazzling flash of
pale-green light darted out, as though an unearthly finger were
pointing at the sun. It was gone in a moment, and the stone looked dull
and rough as before.
"What was that?" Grizzel asked, in a startled voice. "Is it going to go
off like fireworks?"
"Give it to me," said Hugh, taking it from Grizzel's unresisting
fingers. He held it up as she had done, and again the pale-green light
flashed out. He moved it slightly from side to side, and with his
movements the green light took on the shining hues of a rainbow.
"It's like a diamond," said Prudence in an awed voice.
"It _is_ a diamond," cried Hugh. "I knew it! I knew it! I said so!
Grizzel found it in the place we dug last year. Grizzel found it, but
it was me that looked for it, because I knew! Where this one was there
will be more. _We have found a diamond bed!_"
"If Grizzel hadn't rubbed it so hard you would never have known,"
Prudence reminded him. "She rubbed that bit for _weeks_ last year."
Hugh turned the crystal over and over, examining it on every side.
"Diamonds are terrifically hard," he explained more calmly. "It takes
months to cut and polish a diamond properly. Grizzel's pretty good at
sticking to a thing; I'll say that for her. I'm glad the first diamond
was found by her."
"Well--it will take me some time to polish it all over," Grizzel said,
with a sigh. "If I did nothing else all day long but rub it on a stone
it would be clean in about six months."
"Who does this land belong to?" Jerry asked. "Is it your father's?"
"Oh, no--it's Mr. Eraser's. For miles around the land is his. That's
the man we are staying with."
"Then the diamond is Mr. Fraser's, not yours or Grizzel's," Jerry
pronounced.
There was a short silence. "Mr. Fraser said I might have all the gold I
found," Hugh said, in a doubtful tone.
"I expect he guessed that you wouldn't find any," Jerry responded. "But
a diamond like that is a different thing. If it really is a diamond it
is probably pretty valuable--perhaps it is worth a hundred pounds. You
can't walk off with a hundred pounds without telling."
"Well, we'll show it to him. Of course we'll tell him we have found a
diamond bed," Hugh answered.
"It's my diamond," Grizzel declared. "I found it and I rubbed it and it
slept under my pillow, and I hid it and I love it and it's mine. I
don't care what anybody says."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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