Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 | Page 8

Lu! It's too foreign; no sympathy between
you!"

"Stop, stop!" said papa. "You shan't crowd little Lu out of them. What
do you want them for, Lu?"
"To wear," quavered Lu,--"like the balls the Roman ladies carried for
coolness."
"Well, then, you ought to have them. What do you want them for,
Yone?"
"Oh, if Lu's going to have them, I _don't_ want them."
"But give a reason, child."
"Why, to wear, too,--to look at,--to have and to hold for better, for
worse,--to say my prayers on," for a bright idea struck me, "to say my
prayers on, like the Florence rosary." I knew that would finish the
thing.
"Like the Florence rosary?" said papa, in a sleepy voice. "Why, this is
the Florence rosary."
Of course, when we knew that, we were both more crazy to obtain it.
"Oh, Sir," just fluttered Lu, "where did you get it?"
"I got it; the question is, Who's to have it?"
"I must and will, potential and imperative," I exclaimed, quite on fire.
"The nonsense of the thing! Girls with lucid eyes, like shadowy
shallows in quick brooks, can wear crystallizations. As for me, I can
wear only concretions and growths; emeralds and all their cousins
would be shockingly inharmonious on me; but you know, Lu, how I
use Indian spices, and scarlet and white berries and flowers, and little
hearts and notions of beautiful copal that Rose carved for you,--and I
can wear sandal-wood and ebony and pearls, and now this amber. But
you, Lu, you can wear every kind of precious stone, and you may have
Aunt Willoughby's rubies that she promised me; they are all in tone
with you; but I must have this."
"I don't think you're right," said Louise, rather soberly. "You strip
yourself of great advantages. But about the rubies, I don't want
anything so flaming, so you may keep them; and I don't care at all
about this. I think, Sir, on the whole, they belong to Yone for her
name."
"So they do," said papa. "But not to be bought off! That's my little Lu!"
And somehow Lu, who had been holding the rosary, was sitting on
papa's knee, as he half knelt on the floor, and the rosary was in my
hand. And then he produced a little kid box, and there lay inside a star

with a thread of gold for the forehead, circlets for wrist and throat, two
drops, and a ring. Oh, such beauties! You've never seen them.
"The other one shall have these. Aren't you sorry, Yone?" he said.
"Oh, no, indeed! I'd much rather have mine, though these are splendid.
What are they?"
"Aqua-marina," sighed Lu, in an agony of admiration.
"Dear, dear! how did you know?"
Lu blushed, I saw,--but I was too much absorbed with the jewels to
remark it.
"Oh, they are just like that ring on your hand! You don't want two rings
alike," I said. "Where did you get that ring, Lu?"
But Lu had no senses for anything beyond the casket.
If you know aqua-marina, you know something that's before every
other stone in the world. Why, it is as clear as light, white, limpid,
dawn light; sparkles slightly and seldom; looks like pure drops of water,
sea-water, scooped up and falling down again; just a thought of its
parent beryl green hovers round the edges; and it grows more lucent
and sweet to the centre, and there you lose yourself in some dream of
vast seas, a glory of unimagined oceans; and you say that it was
crystallized to any slow flute-like tune, each speck of it floating into
file with a musical grace, and carrying its sound with it. There! it's very
fanciful, but I'm always feeling the tune in aqua-marina, and trying to
find it,--but I shouldn't know it was a tune, if I did, I suppose. How
magnificent it would be, if every atom of creation sprang up and said
its one word of abracadabra, the secret of its existence, and fell silent
again. Oh, dear! you'd die, you know; but what a pow-wow! Then, too,
in aqua-marina proper, the setting is kept out of sight, and you have the
unalloyed stone with its sea-rims and its clearness and steady sweetness.
It wasn't the stone for Louise to wear; it belongs rather to
highly-nervous, excitable persons; and Lu is as calm as I, only so
different! There is something more pure and simple about it than about
anything else; others may flash and twinkle, but this just glows with an
unvarying power, is planetary and strong. It wears the moods of the sea,
too: once in a while a warm amethystine mist suffuses it like a blush;
sometimes a white morning fog breathes over it: you long to get into