Page:Ballinger Price--Us and the Bottle Man.djvu/83

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US AND THE BOTTLEMAN

"Whatever it was, he must have been glad to get back," I said, switching off the light so that we could talk in the dark, which is more creepy and pleasant.

"But the treasure!" Jerry said. "Do you suppose there ever was such treasure in the world? That's something like! Imagine finding gold trees and birds eat ing jewels on the Sea Monster! By the way, do you know about 'Cornelia'?"

I said I thought she had something to do with sitting on a hill and her children turning to stone one after the other, but Jerry said that was Niobe and that it was she who turned to stone, not the children. He has a fearfully long memory. So we put on the light again and looked it up in "The Reader's Handbook," because we did n't want to bother the grown-ups, and we found, of course, that she was the Roman lady who pointed at her sons and said, "These are my jewels!" when somebody

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