Oh, oh! Lena, look!" The Skipper was coming forward with a shell in his hand of exquisite colour and shape.
"Perhaps the young lady like to see this ?" he said.

"This the Voluta Musica,--a valuable shell, young lady.

You look, and see the lines of the staff on the shell, so?
Here they run, you see! The mermaids under the water, they have among themselves no sheet-music, so on shells they must read it.

Can the young lady follow the notes if she take the shell in her hand ?" He laid the lovely thing in the girl's hand, and marked how the polished lip and the soft pink palm wore the same tender shade of rose; but he said nothing of this, for he was not Franci.
Lena examined the shell curiously.

"It does look like music!" she said.
"But there ain't really any notes, are there?
Not like our notes, I mean.