sir ” (his eyes grow moist and his voice husky with
emotion), “ he brought me back only eight shells, but
in one of them there was a pearl worth 10,000 rupees.”
TH E DIVER EMERGING ( i )
The statement clothes the little man in a sudden
nimbus of glory. So small is my spirit, that a moment
before I was thinking only of his rashness in wishing
to surrender a certain income for the doubtful chance
o f pearling, and now I am smitten wfith the sense of
his self-restraint. Imagine a man sticking to his desk,
and posting figures all the long day into a futile horde
of books, while thousand-pounder pearls are lying under
the clear water, in a country of sea-breezes and tropic
islands, only a day’s journey away!
“ I have here, sir,” continues the - little clerk, “ two
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