A later day brought a letter to Grammer, and Gramper delightedly let it be known that the doctor at Wellsville had brought little Bean a fine new baby brother.  Bean himself was not delighted at this.  He had suffered the ministrations of that same doctor and he could imagine no visit of his to result in a situation at all pleasant to any one concerned.  If he had brought a baby it was doubtless not a baby that people would care to have around the house.  He was not cheered when told that he might now go home.

He meant to stay on, and said so.

But the second day brought another letter that had a curious effect on Gramper and Grammer.  Grammer cried, and Gramper told him with a strange, grave manner that now he must go.  He knew that he was not told why; something, he overheard them agree, needn’t be told “just yet.”  This was rather exciting and reconciled him to leaving.

He crept softly down the narrow stairs that night, alleging, when called to by Grammer, the need of a drink of water.  When he returned his hands trembled about the shell.  Swiftly it went to the bottom of his small box, his extra clothing, all his little belongings, being packed cleverly about it.

They kissed him many times the next morning, and when he looked back under the trees to where the old couple stood in front of the little weather-beaten house he saw that Grammer was crying again.  His conscience hurt him a little; he wondered how they would get along without the shell.  But they couldn’t have it, because it was his shell.

The stage turned after a bit, and suddenly there was Gramper at the roadside, breathless after his run across a corner of the east forty.  Instantly he was in the clutch of a great fear; the loss had been discovered.  He sat frozen, waiting.

But Gramper only flourished the napkin-ring, and humorously taunted him with not having packed everything, after all.  The stage drove on, but for the next mile his breathing was jerky.

Toward the end of the day-long ride—­Gramper couldn’t be running after them that far—­he surrendered to his exultation, opened the box and drew out the shell, fondling it, fascinated anew by its varying sheen, excited by the freedom with which he now might touch it.  Again he was the sole passenger and he called to the old driver, to whom nothing at all seemed to have happened because of his filching fruit.

“See my shell I found at Grammer’s!”

But the old man was blind to beauty.  He turned a careless eye upon the treasure, turned it off again with a formless grunt that might have been perfunctory praise, and resumed his half-muttered talk to himself, marked by little oblique nods of triumph—­some endless dispute that he seemed to hold with an invisible opponent.

The owner of the shell was chilled but not daunted.  There would surely be others less benighted who must acclaim the shell’s charm.