38 THE HALL OF SHELLS. 
Every evening the child rejoiced in receiv- 
ing some simple token of the love that had 
filled his thoughts all day. Sometimes it was 
fruit grown mellow and sweet in California’s 
amber sun, or a cluster of roses fragrant as 
love. 
This evening of which we write a box of 
shells was before her, and her father rejoiced 
in seeing her eyes sparkle as the eyes of happy 
children who are well. 
She took a long, pointed shell from the box, 
exclaiming, “Cousin Ellen, papa has brought 
me a sea horn to call my mermaids to their 
banquet!” And placing the shell to her lips 
she blew mimic rounds upon her horn until a 
flush came into her cheeks, and seeing it her 
father’s eyes were dim for Joy. 
“You pretty purple thing,” she said, as she 
selected another shell from ae callecnen her 
father had brought her, “are you a shell at all, 
I wonder, or are you a sea violet?” 
The greater part of the shell that she held 
in her hand was purple as the veins in her 
wrist, but to add to its delicate beauty the 
spire was shaded to white. 
“ Tanthina fragilis is its name, or the ‘sea 
snail’ it is sometimes called,” said her Cousin 
Ellen. “It is one of the daintiest and most 
