They waited in their chairs until the pearls came in, and then they cackled and fought and shouted and threatened until they reached the lowest price the fisherman would stand. In the town, in little offices, sat the men who bought pearls from the fishers. The news came early to the beggars in front of the church, and it made them giggle a little with pleasure, for they knew that there is no almsgiver in the world like a poor man who is suddenly lucky. The doctor looked past his aged patient and saw himself sitting in a restaurant in Paris and a waiter was just opening a bottle of wine. He remembered the room he had lived in there as a great and luxurious place, and he remembered the hard-faced women who had lived with him as a beautiful and kind girl, although she had been none of these three. “I am treating his child for a scorpion sting.' And the docor’s eyes rolled up a little in their fat hammocks and he thought of Paris.
'He is a client of mine,' the doctor said. The Pearl Kino was, the doctor grew stem and judicious at the same time.
