“I’m so sorry for that house. I wish it had been finished. It wants to be—even yet it wants to be.”
“Well, I reckon it never will. Fred had a bit of Shipley in him, too, you see. One of old Hugh’s girls was his grandmother. And Doctor Burnley up there in the big grey house has more than a bit.”
“Is he a relation of ours, too, Cousin Jimmy?”
“Forty-second cousin. Way back he had a cousin of Mary Shipley’s for a great-something. That was in the Old Country—his forebears came out here after we did. He’s a good doctor but an odd stick—odder by far than I am, Emily, and yet nobody ever says he’s not all there. Can you account for that? He doesn’t believe in God—and I am not such a fool as that.”
“Not in any God?”
“Not in any God. He’s an infidel, Emily. And he’s bringing his little girl up the same way, which I think is a shame, Emily,” said Cousin Jimmy confidentially.
“Doesn’t her mother teach her things?”
“Her mother is—dead,” answered Cousin Jimmy, with a little odd hesitation. “Dead these ten years,” he added in a firmer tone. “Ilse Burnley is a great girl—hair like daffodils and eyes like yellow diamonds.”
“Oh, Cousin Jimmy, you promised you’d tell me about the Lost Diamond,” cried Emily eagerly.
“To be sure—to be sure. Well, it’s there—somewhere in or about the old summer-house, Emily. Fifty years ago Edward Murray and his wife came here from Kingsport for a visit. A great lady she was, and wearing silks and diamonds like a queen, though no beauty. She had a ring on with a stone in it that cost two hundred pounds, Emily. That was a big lot of money to be wearing on one wee woman-finger, wasn’t it? It sparkled on her white hand as she held her dress going up the steps of the summer house; but when she came down the steps it was gone.”
