CHAPTER XII

THE END 167

_Illustrations_

_The sea came pouring in._ _Frontispiece_

“_We die in captivity._” _26_

“_‘Translucent wave,’ indeed!_” _42_

“_The police._” _54_

_And disappeared entirely._ _59_

_She caught Kathleen in her arms._ _79_

_The golden door._ _82_

_The Swordfish Brigade._ _103_

_The First Dipsys._ _110_

_Book Hatefuls._ _122_

_Book Heroines._ _130_

_In the net._ _137_

_The Hall of Public Archives._ _149_

_The chargers of the Horse Marines._ _152_

CHAPTER ONE

_Sabrina Fair_

THAT GOING TO THE SEASIDE was the very beginning of everything—only it

seemed as though it were going to be a beginning without an end, like

the roads on the Sussex downs which look like roads and then look like

paths, and then turn into sheep tracks, and then are just grass and

furze bushes and tottergrass and harebells and rabbits and chalk.

The children had been counting the days to The Day. Bernard indeed had

made a calendar on a piece of cardboard that had once been the bottom

of the box in which his new white sandshoes came home. He marked the

divisions of the weeks quite neatly in red ink, and the days were

numbered in blue ink, and every day he crossed off one of those numbers

with a piece of green chalk he happened to have left out of a penny

box. Mavis had washed and ironed all the dolls’ clothes at least a

fortnight before The Day. This was thoughtful and farsighted of her, of

course, but it was a little trying to Kathleen, who was much younger

and who would have preferred to go on playing with her dolls in their

dirtier and more familiar state.

“Well, if you do,” said Mavis, a little hot and cross from the ironing

board, “I’ll never wash anything for you again, not even your face.”

Kathleen somehow felt as if she could bear that.

“But mayn’t I have just one of the dolls” was, however, all she said,

“just the teeniest, weeniest one? Let me have Lord Edward. His head’s

half gone as it is, and I could dress him in a clean hanky and pretend

it was kilts.”

Mavis could not object to this, because, of course, whatever else she

washed she didn’t wash hankies. So Lord Edward had his pale kilts, and

the other dolls were put away in a row in Mavis’s corner drawer. It was

after that that Mavis and Francis had long secret consultations—and

when the younger ones asked questions they were told, “It’s secrets.

You’ll know in good time.” This, of course, excited everyone very

much indeed—and it was rather a comedown when the good time came, and

the secret proved to be nothing more interesting than a large empty

aquarium which the two elders had clubbed their money together to buy,

for eight-and ninepence in the Old Kent Road. They staggered up the

front garden path with it, very hot and tired.

“But what are you going to do with it?” Kathleen asked, as they all

stood around the nursery table looking at it.

“Fill it with seawater,” Francis explained, “to put sea anemones in.”

“Oh yes,” said Kathleen with enthusiasm, “and the crabs and starfish

and prawns and the yellow periwinkles—and all the common objects of the

seashore.”

“We’ll stand it in the window,” Mavis added: “it’ll make the lodgings

look so distinguished.”

“And then perhaps some great scientific gentleman, like Darwin or

Faraday, will see it as he goes by, and it will be such a joyous

surprise to him to come face-to-face with our jellyfish; he’ll offer

to teach Francis all about science for nothing—I see,” said Kathleen

hopefully.

“But how will you get it to the seaside?” Bernard asked, leaning his

hands on the schoolroom table and breathing heavily into the aquarium,

so that its shining sides became dim and misty. “It’s much too big to

go in the boxes, you know.”

“Then I’ll carry it,” said Francis, “it won’t be in the way at all—I

carried it home today.”

“We had to take the bus, you know,” said truthful Mavis, “and then I

had to help you.”

“I don’t believe they’ll let you take it at all,” said Bernard—if you

know anything of grown-ups you will know that Bernard proved to be

quite right.

“Take an aquarium to the seaside—nonsense!” they said. And “What for?”

not waiting for the answer. “They,” just at present, was Aunt Enid.

Francis had always been passionately fond of water. Even when he was

a baby he always stopped crying the moment they put him in the bath.

And he was the little boy who, at the age of four, was lost for three

hours and then brought home by the police who had found him sitting in

a horse trough in front of the Willing Mind, wet to the topmost hair of

his head, and quite happy, entertaining a circle of carters with pots

of beer in their hands. There was very little water in the horse trough

and the most talkative of the carters explained that, the kid being

that wet at the first start off, him and his mates thought he was as

safe in the trough as anywhere—the weather being what it was and all

them nasty motors and trams about.

To Francis, passionately attracted as he was by water in all forms,

from the simple mud puddle to the complicated machinery by which your

bath supply is enabled to get out of order, it was a real tragedy that

he had never seen the sea. Something had always happened to prevent

it. Holidays had been spent in green countries where there were rivers

and wells and ponds, and waters deep and wide—but the water had been

fresh water, and the green grass had been on each side of it. One great

charm of the sea, as he had heard of it, was that it had nothing on the

other side “so far as eye could see.” There was a lot about the sea in

poetry, and Francis, curiously enough, liked poetry.

The buying of the aquarium had been an attempt to make sure that,

having found the sea, he should not lose it again. He imagined the

aquarium fitted with a real rock in the middle, to which radiant sea

anemones clung and limpets stuck. There were to be yellow periwinkles

too, and seaweeds, and gold and silver fish (which don’t live in the

sea by the way, only Francis didn’t know this), flitting about in

radiant scaly splendor, among the shadows of the growing water plants.

He had thought it all out—how a cover might be made, very light, with

rubber in between, like a screw-top bottle, to keep the water in while

it traveled home in the guard’s van to the admiration of passengers and

porters at both stations. And now—he was not to be allowed to take it.

He told Mavis, and she agreed with him that it was a shame.

“But I’ll tell you what,” she said, for she was not one of those

comforters who just say, “I’m sorry,” and don’t try to help. She

generally thought of something that would make things at any rate just

a little better. “Let’s fill it with fresh water, and get some goldfish

and sand and weeds; and I’ll make Eliza promise to put ants’ eggs

in—that’s what they eat—and it’ll be something to break the dreadful

shock when we have to leave the sea and come home again.”

Francis admitted that there was something in this and consented to fill

the aquarium with water from the bath. When this was done the aquarium

was so heavy that the combined efforts of all four children could not

begin to move it.

“Never mind,” said Mavis, the consoler; “let’s empty it out again and

take it back to the common room, and then fill it by secret jugfuls,

carried separately, you know.”

This might have been successful, but Aunt Enid met the first secret

jugful—and forbade the second.

“Messing about,” she called it. “No, of course I shan’t allow you

to waste your money on fish.” And Mother was already at the seaside

getting the lodgings ready for them. Her last words had been—

“Be sure you do exactly what Aunt Enid says.” So, of course, they had

to. Also Mother had said, “Don’t argue,” so they had not even the

melancholy satisfaction of telling Aunt Enid that she was quite wrong,

and that they were not messing about at all.

Aunt Enid was not a real aunt, but just an old friend of Grandmamma’s,

with an aunt’s name and privileges and rather more than an aunt’s

authority. She was much older than a real aunt and not half so nice.

She was what is called “firm” with children, and no one ever called her

auntie. Just Aunt Enid. That will tell you in a moment.

So there the aquarium was, dishearteningly dry—for even the few drops

left in it from its first filling dried up almost at once.

Even in its unwatery state, however, the aquarium was beautiful. It had

not any of that ugly ironwork with red lead showing between the iron

and the glass which you may sometimes have noticed in the aquariums of

your friends. No, it was one solid thick piece of clear glass, faintly

green, and when you stooped down and looked through you could almost

fancy that there really was water in it.

“Let’s put flowers in it,” Kathleen suggested, “and pretend they’re

anemones. Do let’s, Francis.”

“I don’t care what you do,” said Francis. “I’m going to read _The Water

Babies_.”

“Then we’ll do it, and make it a lovely surprise for you,” said

Kathleen cheerily.

Francis sat down squarely with _The Water Babies_ flat before him on

the table, where also his elbows were, and the others, respecting his

sorrow, stole quietly away. Mavis just stepped back to say, “I say,

France, you don’t mind their putting flowers? It’s to please you, you

know.”

“I tell you I don’t mind _anything_,” said Francis savagely.

When the three had finished with it, the aquarium really looked rather

nice, and, if you stooped down and looked sideways through the glass,

like a real aquarium.

Kathleen took some clinkers from the back of the rockery—“where they

won’t show,” she said—and Mavis induced these to stand up like an

arch in the middle of the glassy square. Tufts of long grass, rather

sparingly arranged, looked not unlike waterweed. Bernard begged from

the cook some of the fine silver sand which she uses to scrub the

kitchen tables and dressers with, and Mavis cut the thread of the

Australian shell necklace that Uncle Robert sent her last Christmas, so

that there should be real, shimmery, silvery shells on the sand. (This

was rather self-sacrificing of her, because she knew she would have to

put them all back again on their string, and you know what a bother

shells are to thread.) They shone delightfully through the glass. But

the great triumph was the sea anemones—pink and red and yellow—clinging

to the rocky arch just as though they were growing there.

“Oh, lovely, lovely,” Kathleen cried, as Mavis fixed the last delicate

flesh-tinted crown. “Come and look, France.”

“Not yet,” said Mavis, in a great hurry, and she tied the thread of the

necklace round a tin goldfish (out of the box with the duck and the

boat and the mackerel and the lobster and the magnet that makes them

all move about—you know) and hung it from the middle of the arch. It

looked just as though it were swimming—you hardly noticed the thread at

all.

“_Now_, France,” she called. And Francis came slowly with his thumb in

_The Water Babies_. It was nearly dark by now, but Mavis had lighted

the four dollhouse candles in the gilt candlesticks and set them on the

table around the aquarium.

“Look through the side,” she said; “isn’t it ripping?”

“Why,” said Francis slowly, “you’ve got water in it—and real anemones!

Where on earth...?”

“Not real,” said Mavis. “I wish they were; they’re only dahlias. But it

does look pretty, doesn’t it?”

“It’s like Fairyland,” said Kathleen, and Bernard added, “I _am_ glad

you bought it.”

“It just shows what it will be like when we _do_ get the sea

creatures,” said Mavis. “Oh, Francis, you do like it, don’t you?”

“Oh, I like it all right,” he answered, pressing his nose against the

thick glass, “but I wanted it to be waving weeds and mysterious wetness

like the Sabrina picture.”

The other three glanced at the picture which hung over the

mantelpiece—Sabrina and the water nymphs, drifting along among the

waterweeds and water lilies. There were words under the picture, and

Francis dreamily began to say them:

“‘_Sabrina fair,

Listen where thou art sitting,

Under the glassie, cool, translucent wave

In twisted braids of Lillies knitting

The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair...._’”

“Hullo—what was that?” he said in quite a different voice, and jumped

up.

“What was what?” the others naturally asked.

“Did you put something alive in there?” Francis asked.

“Of course not,” said Mavis. “Why?”

“Well, I saw something move, that’s all.”

They all crowded around and peered over the glass walls. Nothing, of

course, but the sand and the grass and the shells, the clinkers and the

dahlias and the little suspended tin goldfish.

“I expect the goldfish swung a bit,” said Bernard. “That’s what it must

have been.”

“It didn’t look like that,” Francis answered. “It looked more like—”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know—get out of the light. Let’s have another squint.”

He stooped down and looked again through the glass.

“It’s not the goldfish,” he said. “That’s as quiet as a trout asleep.

No—I suppose it was a shadow or something.”

“You might tell us what it looked like,” said Kathleen.

“Was it like a rat?” Bernard asked with interest.

“Not a bit. It was more like—”

“Well, like what?” asked three aggravated voices.

“Like Sabrina—only very, very tiny.”

“A sort of doll—Sabrina,” said Kathleen, “how awfully jolly!”

“It wasn’t at all like a doll, and it wasn’t jolly,” said Francis

shortly—“only I wish it would come again.”

It didn’t, however.

“I say,” said Mavis, struck by a new idea, “perhaps it’s a magic

aquarium.”

“Let’s play it is,” suggested Kathleen—“let’s play it’s a magic glass

and we can see what we like in it. I see a fairy palace with gleaming

spires of crystal and silver.”

“I see a football match, and our chaps winning,” said Bernard heavily,

joining in the new game.

“Shut up,” said Francis. “That isn’t play. There was something.”

“Suppose it is magic,” said Mavis again.

“We’ve played magic so often, and nothing’s ever happened—even when we

made the fire of sweet-scented woods and eastern gums, and all that,”

said Bernard; “it’s much better to pretend right away. We always have

to in the end. Magic just wastes time. There isn’t any magic really, is

there, Mavis?”

“Shut up, I tell you,” was the only answer of Francis, his nose now

once more flattened against the smooth green glass.

Here Aunt Enid’s voice was heard on the landing outside, saying,

“Little ones—bed,” in no uncertain tones.

The two grunted as it were in whispers, but there was no appeal against

Aunt Enid, and they went, their grunts growing feebler as they crossed

the room, and dying away in a despairing silence as they and Aunt Enid

met abruptly at the top of the stairs.

“Shut the door,” said Francis, in a strained sort of voice. And

Mavis obeyed, even though he hadn’t said “please.” She really was an

excellent sister. Francis, in moments of weakness, had gone so far as

to admit that she wasn’t half bad.

“I say,” she said when the click of the latch assured her that they

were alone, “how could it be magic? We never said any spell.”

“No more we did,” said Francis, “unless—And besides, it’s all nonsense,

of course, about magic. It’s just a game we play, isn’t it?”

“Yes, of course,” Mavis said doubtfully; “but what did you mean by

‘unless’?”

“We weren’t saying any spells, were we?”

“No, of course we weren’t—we weren’t saying anything—”

“As it happens _I_ was.”

“Was what? When?”

“When it happened.”

“What happened?”

Will it be believed that Aunt Enid chose this moment for opening the

door just wide enough to say, “Mavis—bed.” And Mavis had to go. But as

she went she said again: “What happened?”

“_It_,” said Francis, “whatever it was. I was saying....”

“MAVIS!” called Aunt Enid.

“Yes, Aunt Enid—you were saying _what_?”

“I was saying, ‘_Sabrina fair_,’” said Francis, “do you think—but,

of course, it couldn’t have been—and all dry like that, no water or

anything.”

“Perhaps magic _has_ to be dry,” said Mavis. “Coming, Aunt Enid! It

seems to be mostly burning things, and, of course, that wouldn’t do in

the water. What _did_ you see?”

“It looked like Sabrina,” said Francis—“only tiny, tiny. Not

doll-small, you know, but live-small, like through the wrong end of a

telescope. I do wish you’d seen it.”

“Say, ‘Sabrina fair’ again quick while I look.”

“‘_Sabrina fair,

Listen where thou art sitting,

Under the—_’”

“Oh, Mavis, it is—it did. There’s something there truly. Look!”

“Where?” said Mavis. “I can’t see—oh, let me look.”

“MAVIS!” called Aunt Enid very loud indeed; and Mavis tore herself away.

“I must go,” she said. “Never mind, we’ll look again tomorrow. Oh,

France, if it _should_ be—magic, I mean—I’ll tell you what—”

But she never told him what, for Aunt Enid swept in and swept

out, bearing Mavis away, as it were, in a whirlwind of impatient

exasperation, and, without seeming to stop to do it, blowing out the

four candles as she came and went.

At the door she turned to say, “Good night, Francis. Your bath’s turned

on ready. Be sure you wash well behind your ears. We shan’t have much

time in the morning.”

“But Mavis always bathes first,” said he. “I’m the eldest.”

“Don’t argue, child, for goodness’ sake,” said Aunt Enid. “Mavis is

having the flat bath in my bedroom to save time. Come—no nonsense,” she

paused at the door to say. “Let me see you go. Right about face—quick

march!”

And he had to.

“If she must pretend to give orders like drill, she might at least

learn to say ‘’Bout turn!’” he reflected, struggling with his collar

stud in the steaming bathroom. “Never mind. I’ll get up early and see

if I can’t see it again.”

And so he did—but early as he was, Aunt Enid and the servants were

earlier. The aquarium was empty—clear, clean, shining and quite empty.

Aunt Enid could not understand why Francis ate so little breakfast.

“What has she done with them?” he wondered later.

“_I_ know,” said Bernard solemnly. “She told Esther to put them on the

kitchen fire—I only just saved my fish.”

“And what about my shells?” asked Mavis in sudden fear.

“Oh, she took those to take care of. Said you weren’t old enough to

take care of them yourself.”

You will wonder why the children did not ask their Aunt Enid right

out what had become of the contents of the aquarium. Well, you don’t

know their Aunt Enid. And besides, even on that first morning,

before anything that really _was_ anything could be said to have

happened—for, after all, what Francis said he had seen might have been

just fancy—there was a sort of misty, curious, trembling feeling at

the hearts of Mavis and her brother which made them feel that they did

not want to talk about the aquarium and what had been in it to any

grown-up—and least of all to their Aunt Enid.

And leaving the aquarium, that was the hardest thing of all. They

thought of telegraphing to Mother, to ask whether, after all, they

mightn’t bring it—but there was first the difficulty of wording a

telegram so that their mother would understand and not deem it insanity

or a practical joke—secondly, the fact that ten-pence half-penny, which

was all they had between them, would not cover the baldest statement of

the facts.

_MRS DESMOND,

CARE OF MRS PEARCE,

EAST CLIFF VILLA,

LEWIS ROAD,

WEST BEACHFIELD-ON-SEA, SUSSEX_

alone would be eightpence—and the simplest appeal, such as “May we

bring aquarium please say yes wire reply” brought the whole thing

hopelessly beyond their means.

“It’s no good,” said Francis hopelessly. “And, anyway,” said Kathleen,

“there wouldn’t be time to get an answer before we go.”

No one had thought of this. It was a sort of backhanded consolation.

“But think of coming back to it,” said Mavis: “it’ll be something

to live for, when we come back from the sea and everything else is

beastly.”

And it was.

CHAPTER TWO

_The Captive_

THE DELICATE pinkish bloom of newness was on the wooden spades, the

slick smoothness of the painted pails showed neither scratch nor dent

on their green and scarlet surface—the shrimping nets were full and

fluffy as, once they and sand and water had met, they never could be

again. The pails and spades and nets formed the topmost layer of a

pile of luggage—you know the sort of thing, with the big boxes at the

bottom; and the carryall bulging with its wraps and mackers; the old

portmanteau that shows its striped lining through the crack and is so

useful for putting boots in; and the sponge bag, and all the little

things that get left out. You can almost always squeeze a ball or a

paint box or a box of chalks or any of those things—which grown-ups say

you won’t really want till you come back—into that old portmanteau—and

then when it’s being unpacked at the journey’s end the most that can

happen will be that someone will say, “I thought I told you not to

bring that,” and if you don’t answer back, that will be all. But most

likely in the agitation of unpacking and settling in, your tennis ball,

or pencil box, or whatever it is, will pass unnoticed. Of course, you

can’t shove an aquarium into the old portmanteau—nor a pair of rabbits,

nor a hedgehog—but anything in reason you can.

The luggage that goes in the van is not much trouble—of course, it

has to be packed and to be strapped, and labeled and looked after at

the junction, but apart from that the big luggage behaves itself,

keeps itself to itself, and like your elder brothers at college never

occasions its friends a moment’s anxiety. It is the younger fry of the

luggage family, the things you have with you in the carriage that are

troublesome—the bundle of umbrellas and walking sticks, the golf clubs,

the rugs, the greatcoats, the basket of things to eat, the books you

are going to read in the train and as often as not you never look at

them, the newspapers that the grown-ups are tired of and yet don’t want

to throw away, their little bags or dispatch cases and suitcases and

card cases, and scarfs and gloves—

The children were traveling under the care of Aunt Enid, who always had

far more of these tiresome odds and ends than Mother had—and it was at

the last moment, when the cab was almost to be expected to be there,

that Aunt Enid rushed out to the corner shop and returned with four new

spades, four new pails, and four new shrimping nets, and presented them

to the children just in time for them to be added to the heap of odds

and ends with which the cab was filled up.

“I hope it’s not ungrateful,” said Mavis at the station as they

stood waiting by the luggage mound while Aunt Enid went to take the

tickets—“but why couldn’t she have bought them at Beachfield?”

“Makes us look such babies,” said Francis, who would not be above using

a wooden spade at the proper time and place but did not care to be

branded in the face of all Waterloo Junction as one of those kids off

to the seaside with little spades and pails.

Kathleen and Bernard were, however, young enough to derive a certain

pleasure from stroking the smooth, curved surface of the spades till

Aunt Enid came fussing back with the tickets and told them to put their

gloves on for goodness’ sake and try not to look like street children.

I am sorry that the first thing you should hear about the children

should be that they did not care about their Aunt Enid, but this was

unfortunately the case. And if you think this was not nice of them I

can only remind you that you do not know their Aunt Enid.

There was a short, sharp struggle with the porter, a flustered passage

along the platform and the children were safe in the carriage marked

“Reserved”—thrown into it, as it were, with all that small fry of

luggage which I have just described. Then Aunt Enid fussed off again to

exchange a few last home truths with the porter, and the children were

left.

“We breathe again,” said Mavis.

“Not yet we don’t,” said Francis, “there’ll be some more fuss as soon

as she comes back. I’d almost as soon not go to the sea as go with her.”

“But you’ve never seen the sea,” Mavis reminded him.

“I know,” said Francis, morosely, “but look at all this—” he indicated

the tangle of their possessions which littered seats and rack—“I do

wish—”

He stopped, for a head appeared in the open doorway—in a round hat very

like Aunt Enid’s—but it was not Aunt Enid’s. The face under the hat was

a much younger, kinder one.

“I’m afraid this carriage is reserved,” said the voice that belonged to

the face.

“Yes,” said Kathleen, “but there’s lots of room if you like to come

too.”

“I don’t know if the aunt we’re with would like it,” said the more

cautious Mavis. “We should, of course,” she added to meet the kind

smiling eyes that looked from under the hat that was like Aunt Enid’s.

The lady said: “I’m an aunt too—I’m going to meet my nephew at the

junction. The train’s frightfully crowded.... If I were to talk to your

aunt ... perhaps on the strength of our common aunthood. The train will

start in a minute. I haven’t any luggage to be a bother—nothing but one

paper.”—she had indeed a folded newspaper in her hands.

“Oh, do get in,” said Kathleen, dancing with anxiety, “I’m sure Aunt

Enid won’t mind,”—Kathleen was always hopeful—“suppose the train were

to start or anything!”

“Well, if you think I may,” said the lady, and tossed her paper into

the corner in a lighthearted way which the children found charming. Her

pleasant face was rising in the oblong of the carriage doorway, her

foot was on the carriage step, when suddenly she retreated back and

down. It was almost as though someone pulled her off the carriage step.

“Excuse me,” said a voice, “this carriage is reserved.” The pleasant

face of the lady disappeared and the—well, the face of Aunt Enid took

its place. The lady vanished. Aunt Enid trod on Kathleen’s foot, pushed

against Bernard’s waistcoat, sat down, partly on Mavis and partly on

Francis and said—“Of all the impertinence!” Then someone banged the

door—the train shivered and trembled and pulled itself together in the

way we all know so well—grunted, snorted, screamed, and was off. Aunt

Enid stood up arranging things on the rack, so that the children could

not even see if the nice lady had found a seat in the train.

“Well—I do think—” Francis could not help saying.

“Oh—do you?” said Aunt Enid, “I should never have thought it of you.”

When she had arranged the things in the rack to her satisfaction she

pointed out a few little faults that she had noticed in the children

and settled down to read a book by Miss Marie Corelli. The children

looked miserably at each other. They could not understand why Mother

had placed them under the control of this most unpleasant mock aunt.

There was a reason for it, of course. If your parents, who are

generally so kind and jolly, suddenly do a thing that you can’t

understand and can hardly bear, you may be quite sure they have a good

reason for it. The reason in this case was that Aunt Enid was the only

person who offered to take charge of the children at a time when all

the nice people who usually did it were having influenza. Also she was

an old friend of Granny’s. Granny’s taste in friends must have been

very odd, Francis decided, or else Aunt Enid must have changed a good

deal since she was young. And there she sat reading her dull book. The

children also had been provided with books—_Eric, or Little by Little_;

_Elsie, or Like a Little Candle_; _Brave Bessie_ and _Ingenious Isabel_

had been dealt out as though they were cards for a game, before leaving

home. They had been a great bother to carry, and they were impossible

to read. Kathleen and Bernard presently preferred looking out of the

windows, and the two elder ones tried to read the paper left by the

lady, “looking over.”

Now, that is just where it was, and really what all that has been

written before is about. If that lady hadn’t happened to look in at

their door, and if she hadn’t happened to leave the paper they would

never have seen it, because they weren’t the sort of children who read

papers except under extreme provocation.

You will not find it easy to believe, and I myself can’t see why

it should have happened, but the very first word they saw in that

newspaper was Beachfield, and the second was On, and the third was

Sea, and the fifth was Mermaid. The fourth which came between Sea and

Mermaid was Alleged.

“I say,” said Mavis, “let’s look.”

“Don’t pull then, you can see all right,” said Francis, and this is

what they read together:

BEACHFIELD-ON-SEA—ALLEGED MERMAID. AMAZING STORY.

“‘At this season of the year, which has come to be

designated the silly season, the public press is

deluged with puerile old-world stories of gigantic

gooseberries and enormous sea serpents. So that it is

quite in keeping with the weird traditions of this

time of the year to find a story of some wonder of the

deep, arising even at so well-known a watering place

as Beachfield. Close to an excellent golf course, and

surrounded by various beauty spots, with a thoroughly

revised water supply, a newly painted pier and three

rival Cinematograph Picture Palaces, Beachfield has

long been known as a rising _plage_ of exceptional

attractions, the quaint charm of its....’”

“Hold on,” said Francis, “this isn’t about any old Mermaid.”

“Oh, that’ll be further on,” said Mavis. “I expect they have to put

all that stuff in to be polite to Beachfield—let’s skip—‘agreeable

promenade, every modern convenience, while preserving its quaint....’

What does quaint mean, and why do they keep on saying it?”

“I don’t think it means anything,” said Francis, “it’s just a word

they use, like weird and dainty. You always see it in a newspaper.

Ah—got her. Here she is—‘The excitement may be better imagined than

described’—no, that’s about the Gymkhana—here we are:

“‘Master Wilfred Wilson, the son of a well-known and

respected resident, arrived home yesterday evening in

tears. Inquiry elicited a statement that he had been

paddling in the rock pools, which are to be found in

such profusion under the West Cliff, when something

gently pinched his foot. He feared that it might be a

lobster, having read that these crustaceans sometimes

attack the unwary intruder, and he screamed. So far

his story, though unusual, contains nothing inherently

impossible. But when he went on to state that a noise

“like a lady speaking” told him not to cry, and that,

on looking down, he perceived that what held him was a

hand “coming from one of the rocks under water,” his

statement was naturally received with some incredulity.

It was not until a boating party returning from a

pleasure trip westward stated that they had seen a

curious sort of white seal with a dark tail darting

through the clear water below their boat that Master

Wilfred’s story obtained any measure of credence.’”

(“What’s credence?” said Mavis.

“Oh, never mind. It’s what you believe with, I think. Go on,” said

Francis.)

“‘—of credence. Mr. Wilson, who seems to have urged an

early retirement to bed as a cure for telling stories

and getting his feet wet, allowed his son to rise and

conduct him to the scene of adventure. But Mr. Wilson,

though he even went to the length of paddling in some

of the pools, did not see or feel any hands nor hear

any noise, ladylike or otherwise. No doubt the seal

theory is the correct one. A white seal would be a

valuable acquisition to the town, and would, no doubt,

attract visitors. Several boats have gone out, some

with nets and some with lines. Mr. Carrerras, a visitor

from South America, has gone out with a lariat, which

in these latitudes is, of course, quite a novelty.’”

“That’s all,” whispered Francis, and glanced at Aunt Enid. “I say—she’s

asleep.” He beckoned the others, and they screwed themselves along

to that end of the carriage farthest from the slumbering aunt. “Just

listen to this,” he said. Then in hoarse undertones he read all about

the Mermaid.

“I say,” said Bernard, “I do hope it’s a seal. I’ve never seen a seal.”

“I hope they _do_ catch it,” said Kathleen. “Fancy seeing a real live

Mermaid.”

“If it’s a real live Mermaid I jolly well hope they don’t catch her,”

said Francis.

“So do I,” said Mavis. “I’m certain she would die in captivity.”

“But I’ll tell you what,” said Francis, “we’ll go and look for her,

first thing tomorrow. I suppose,” he added thoughtfully, “Sabrina was a

sort of Mermaid.”

“She hasn’t a tail, you know,” Kathleen reminded him.

“It isn’t the tail that makes the Mermaid,” Francis reminded her. “It’s

being able to live underwater. If it was the tail, then mackerels would

be Mermaids.”

“And, of course, they’re not. _I_ see,” said Kathleen.

“I wish,” said Bernard, “that she’d given us bows and arrows instead of

pails and spades, and then we could have gone seal-shooting—”

“Or Mermaid-shooting,” said Kathleen. “Yes, that would have been

ripping.”

Before Francis and Mavis could say how shocked they were at the idea of

shooting Mermaids, Aunt Enid woke up and took the newspaper away from

them, because newspapers are not fit reading for children.

She was somehow the kind of person before whom you never talk about

anything that you really care for, and it was impossible therefore to

pursue either seals or Mermaids. It seemed best to read _Eric_ and the

rest of the books. It was uphill work.

But the last two remarks of Bernard and Kathleen had sunk into the

minds of the two elder children. That was why, when they had reached

Beachfield and found Mother and rejoiced over her, and when Aunt Enid

had unexpectedly gone on by that same train to stay with her really

relations at Bournemouth, they did not say any more to the little

ones about Mermaids or seals, but just joined freely in the chorus of

pleasure at Aunt Enid’s departure.

“I thought she was going to stay with us all the time,” said Kathleen.

“Oh, Mummy, I am so glad she isn’t.”

“Why? Don’t you like Aunt Enid? Isn’t she kind?”

All four thought of the spades and pails and shrimping nets, and of

_Eric_ and _Elsie_ and the other books—and all said:

“Yes.”

“Then what was it?” Mother asked. And they could not tell her. It is

sometimes awfully difficult to tell things to your mother, however much

you love her. The best Francis could do was:

“Well—you see we’re not used to her.”

And Kathleen said: “I don’t think perhaps she’s used to being an aunt.

But she was kind.”

And Mother was wise and didn’t ask any more questions. Also she at once

abandoned an idea one had had of asking Aunt Enid to come and stay at

Beachfield for part of the holidays; and this was just as well, for if

Aunt Enid had not passed out of the story exactly when she did, there

would not have been any story to pass out of. And as she does now pass

out of the story I will say that she thought she was very kind, and

that she meant extremely well.

There was a little whispering between Francis and Mavis just after tea,

and a little more just before bed, but it was tactfully done and the

unwhispered-to younger ones never noticed it.

The lodgings were very nice—a little way out of the town—not a villa at

all as everyone had feared. I suppose the landlady thought it grander

to call it a villa, but it was really a house that had once been a mill

house, and was all made of a soft-colored gray wood with a red-tiled

roof, and at the back was the old mill, also gray and beautiful—not

used now for what it was built for—but just as a store for fishing nets

and wheelbarrows and old rabbit hutches and beehives and harnesses

and odds and ends, and the sack of food for the landlady’s chickens.

There was a great corn bin there too—that must have been in some big

stable—and some broken chairs and an old wooden cradle that hadn’t had

any babies in it since the landlady’s mother was a little girl.

On any ordinary holiday the mill would have had all the charm of

a magic palace for the children, with its wonderful collection of

pleasant and unusual things to play with, but just now all their

thoughts were on Mermaids. And the two elder ones decided that they

would go out alone the first thing in the morning and look for the

Mermaid.

Mavis woke Francis up very early indeed, and they got up and dressed

quite quietly, not washing, I am sorry to say, because water makes such

a noise when you pour it out. And I am afraid their hair was not very

thoroughly brushed either. There was not a soul stirring in the road as

they went out, unless you count the mill cat who had been out all night

and was creeping home very tired and dusty looking, and a yellowhammer

who sat on a tree a hundred yards down the road and repeated his name

over and over again in that conceited way yellowhammers have, until

they got close to him; and then he wagged his tail impudently at them

and flew on to the next tree where he began to talk about himself as

loudly as ever.

This desire to find the Mermaid must have been wonderfully strong in

Francis, for it completely swallowed the longing of years—the longing

to see the sea. It had been too dark the night before to see anything

but the winking faces of the houses as the fly went past them. But now

as he and Mavis ran noiselessly down the sandy path in their rubber

shoes and turned the corner of the road, he saw a great pale-gray

something spread out in front of him, lit with points of red and gold

fire where the sun touched it. He stopped.

“Mavis,” he said, in quite an odd voice, “that’s the sea.”

“Yes,” she said and stopped too.

“It isn’t a bit what I expected,” he said, and went on running.

“Don’t you like it?” asked Mavis, running after him.

“Oh—like,” said Francis, “it isn’t the sort of thing you _like_.”

When they got down to the shore the sands and the pebbles were all wet

because the tide had just gone down, and there were the rocks and the

little rock pools, and the limpets, and whelks, and the little yellow

periwinkles looking like particularly fine Indian corn all scattered

among the red and the brown and the green seaweed.

“Now, this _is_ jolly,” said Francis. “This is jolly if you like. I

almost wish we’d wakened the others. It doesn’t seem quite fair.”

“Oh, they’ve seen it before,” Mavis said, quite truly, “and I don’t

think it’s any good going by fours to look for Mermaids, do you?”

“Besides,” said Francis, saying what had been in their thoughts since

yesterday in the train, “Kathleen wanted to shoot Mermaids, and Bernard

thought it was seals, anyhow.”

They had sat down and were hastily pulling off their shoes and

stockings.

“Of course,” said he, “we shan’t find anything. It isn’t likely.”

“Well,” she said, “for anything we jolly well know, they may have found

her already. Take care how you go over these rocks, they’re awfully

slippy.”

“As if I didn’t know that,” said he, and ran across the narrow strip

of sand that divided rocks from shingle and set his foot for the first

time in The Sea. It was only a shallow little green and white rock

pool, but it was the sea all the same.

“I say, isn’t it cold,” said Mavis, withdrawing pink and dripping toes;

“do mind how you go—”

“As if I—” said Francis, again, and sat down suddenly and splashingly

in a large, clear sparkling pool.

“Now, I suppose we’ve got to go home at once and you change,” said

Mavis, not without bitterness.

“Nonsense,” said Francis, getting up with some difficulty and clinging

wetly to Mavis to steady himself. “I’m quite dry, almost.”

“You know what colds are like,” said Mavis, “and staying indoors all

day, or perhaps bed, and mustard plasters and gruel with butter in

it. Oh, come along home, we should never have found the Mermaid. It’s

much too bright and light and everyday-ish for anything like magic to

happen. Come on home, do.”

“Let’s just go out to the end of the rocks,” Francis urged, “just to

see what it’s like where the water gets deep and the seaweed goes

swish, swish, all long and lanky and grassy, like in the Sabrina

picture.”

“Halfway then, not more,” said Mavis, firmly, “it’s dangerous—deep

outside—Mother said so.”

And halfway they went, Mavis still cautious, and Francis, after his

wetting, almost showing off in his fine carelessness of whether he

went in again or not. It was very jolly. You know how soft and squeezy

the blobby kind of seaweed is to walk on, and how satin smooth is the

ribbon kind; how sharp are limpets, especially when they are covered

with barnacles, and how comparatively bearable to the foot are the pale

primrose-colored hemispheres of the periwinkle.

“Now,” said Mavis, “come on back. We’ll run all the way as soon as we

get our shoes and stockings on for fear of colds.”

“I almost wish we hadn’t come,” said Francis, turning with a face of

gloom.

“You didn’t really think we should find a Mermaid, did you?” Mavis

asked, and laughed, though she was really annoyed with Francis for

getting wet and cutting short this exciting morning game. But she was a

good sister.

“It’s all been so silly. Flopping into that pool, and talking and

rotting, and just walking out and in again. We ought to have come by

moonlight, and been very quiet and serious, and said—

“‘_Sabrina fair,

Listen where thou art sitting—_’”

“Ow—Hold on a minute. I’ve caught my foot in something.”

Mavis stopped and took hold of her brother’s arm to steady him; and as

she did so both children plainly heard a voice that was not the voice

of either of them. It was the sweetest voice in the world they thought,

and it said:

“Save her. We die in captivity.”

Francis looked down and had a sort of sudden sight of something white

and brown and green that moved and went quickly down under the stone on

which Mavis was standing. There was nothing now holding his foot.

“I say,” he said, on a deep breath of awe and wonder, “did you hear

that?”

“Of course, I heard it.”

“We couldn’t both have fancied it,” he said, “I wish it had told us who

to save, and where, and how—”

“Whose do you think that voice was?” Mavis asked softly.

“The Mermaid’s,” said Francis, “who else’s could it have been?”

[Illustration: “_We die in captivity._”]

“Then the magic’s really begun—”

“Mermaids aren’t magic,” he said, “anymore than flying fishes or

giraffes are.”

“But she came when you said ‘Sabrina fair,’” said Mavis.

“Sabrina wasn’t a Mermaid,” said Francis firmly. “It’s no use trying

to join things on when they won’t. Come on, we may as well be getting

home.”

“Mightn’t she be?” suggested Mavis. “A Mermaid, I mean. Like salmon

that live in rivers and go down to the sea.”

“I say, I never thought of that. How simply ripping if it turned out

to be really Sabrina—wouldn’t it be? But which do you suppose could

be her—the one who spoke to us or the one she’s afraid will die in

captivity—the one she wants us to save.”

They had reached the shore by now and Mavis looked up from turning her

brown stockings right way out to say:

“I suppose we didn’t really both fancy it. Could we have? Isn’t there

some sort of scientific magic that makes people think the same things

as each other when it’s not true at all, like with Indian mango tricks?

Uncle Fred said so, you know, they call it ‘Tell-ee-something.’”

“I’ll tell _you_ something,” said Francis, urgent with shoelace, “if we

keep on saying things weren’t when we know perfectly well they were,

we shall soon dish up any sort of chance of magic we may ever have

had. When do you find people in books going on like that? They just

say ‘This is magic!’ and behave as if it was. They don’t go pretending

they’re not sure. Why, no magic would stand it.”

“Aunt Dorothea once told me that all magic was like Prince Rupert’s

drop,” Mavis owned: “if once you broke it there was nothing left but a

little dust.”

“That’s just what I’m saying, isn’t it? We’ve always felt there was

magic right enough, haven’t we? Well, now we’ve come across it, don’t

let’s be silly and pretend. Let’s believe in it as hard as ever we

can. Mavis—shall we, eh? Believing in things makes them stronger. Aunt

Dorothea said that too—you remember.”

They stood up in their shoes.

“Shall we tell the others?” Mavis asked.

“We must,” said Francis, “it would be so sneakish not to. But they

won’t believe us. We shall have to be like Cassandra and not mind.”

“I only wish I knew who it is we’ve got to save,” said Mavis.

Francis had a very strong and perfect feeling that they would know this

all in good time. He could not have explained this, but he felt it. All

he said was, “Let’s run.”

And they ran.

Kathleen and Bernard met them at the gate, dancing with excitement and

impatience.

“Where have you been?” they cried and “What on earth?” and “Why, you’re

all wet, France.”

“Down to the sea—shut up, I know I am—” their elder brother came in and

passed up the path to the gate.

“You might have called us,” said Kathleen in a

more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger sort of voice, “but anyhow you’ve lost

something by going out so early without us.”

“Lost something. What?”

“Hearing the great news,” said Bernard, and he added, “Aha!”

“What news?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Bernard was naturally annoyed at having

been left out of the first expedition of the holidays. Anyone would

have. Even you or I.

“Out with it,” said Francis, with a hand on Bernard’s ear. There

came a yell from Bernard and Mother’s voice from the window, saying,

“Children, children.”

“All right, Mummy. Now, Bear—don’t be a young rotter. What’s the news?”

“You’re hurting my ear,” was all Bernard’s rejoinder.

“All right,” said Francis, “we’ve got some news too. But we won’t tell,

will we, Mavis?”

“Oh _don’t_,” said Kathleen, “don’t let’s be sneaky, the very first day

too. It’s only that they’ve caught the Mermaid, and I’m afraid she’ll

die in captivity, like you said. What’s yours?”

Francis had released Bernard’s ear and now he turned to Mavis.

“So that’s it,” he said slowly—“who’s got her?”

“The circus people. What’s your news?” asked Kathleen eagerly.

“After brek,” said Francis. “Yes, Mother, half a sec! I apologize

about the ear, Bernard. We will tell you all. Oh, it’s quite different

from what you think. We meet and discuss the situation in the mill the

minute we’re free from brek. Agreed? Right! Yes, Mother, coming!”

“Then there must,” Mavis whispered to Francis, “be two Mermaids. They

can’t both be Sabrina ... then which...?”

“We’ve got to save one of them anyhow,” Francis answered with the light

of big adventure in his eye, “_they die in captivity_.”

CHAPTER THREE

_The Rescue_

THE GREAT QUESTION, of course, was—Would Mother take them to the

circus, or would she, if she wouldn’t herself take them, let them

go alone? She had once, in Buckinghamshire, allowed them to go to a

traveling menagerie, after exacting from them a promise that they were

not to touch any of the animals, and they had seen reason to regret

their promise when the showman offered to let them stroke his tame

performing wolf, who was so very like a collie. When they had said,

“No, thank you,” the showman had said, “Oh, frightened, are you? Run

along home to Mammy then!” and the bystanders had laughed in a most

insulting way. At a circus, of course, the horses and things aren’t

near enough for you to stroke them, so this time they might not be

asked to promise. If Mother came with them her presence, though

agreeable, would certainly add to the difficulties, already quite

enough—as even Mavis could not but see—of rescuing the Mermaid. But

suppose Mother didn’t come with them.

“Suppose we have to promise we won’t touch any of the animals?”

suggested Cathay. “You can’t rescue a person without touching it.”

“That’s just it,” said Mavis, “a Mermaid isn’t an animal. She’s a

person.”

“But suppose it isn’t that sort of Mermaid,” said Bernard. “Suppose

it’s the sort that other people call seals, like it said in the paper.”

“Well, it isn’t,” said Francis briefly, adding, “so there!”

They were talking in the front garden, leaning over the green gate

while Mother upstairs unpacked the luggage that had been the mound with

spades on top only yesterday, at Waterloo.

“Mavis!” Mother called through the open window. “I can only find—but

you’d better come up.”

“I ought to offer to help Mother unpack,” said Mavis, and went walking

slowly.

She came back after a little while, however, quickly running.

“It’s all right,” she said. “Mother’s going to meet Daddy at the

Junction this afternoon and buy us sunbonnets. And we’re to take

our spades and go down to the sea till dinnertime—it’s roast rabbit

and apple dumps—I asked Mrs. Pearce—and we can go to the circus by

ourselves—and she never said a word about promise not to touch the

animals.”

So off they went, down the white road where the yellowhammer was

talking about himself as usual on the tree just beyond wherever you

happened to be walking. And so to the beach.

Now, it is very difficult to care much about a Mermaid you have never

seen or heard or touched. On the other hand, when once you have seen

one and touched one and heard one speak, you seem to care for very

little else. This was why when they got to the shore Kathleen and

Bernard began at once to dig the moat of a sandcastle, while the elder

ones walked up and down, dragging the new spades after them like some

new kind of tail, and talking, talking, talking till Kathleen said they

might help dig or the tide would be in before the castle was done.

“You don’t know what a lark sandcastles are, France,” she added kindly,

“because you’ve never seen the sea before.”

So then they all dug and piled and patted and made molds of their pails

to stand as towers to the castle and dug out dungeons and tunnels and

bridges, only the roof always gave way in the end unless you had beaten

the sand very tight beforehand. It was a glorious castle, though not

quite finished when the first thin flat wash of the sea reached it.

And then everyone worked twice as hard trying to keep the sea out till

all was hopeless, and then everyone crowded into the castle and the

sea washed it away bit by bit till there was only a shapeless island

left, and everyone was wet through and had to change every single thing

the minute they got home. You will know by that how much they enjoyed

themselves.

After the roast rabbit and the apple dumplings Mother started on the

sunbonnet-and-meet-Daddy expedition. Francis went with her to the

station and returned a little sad.

“I had to promise not to touch any of the animals,” he said. “And

perhaps a Mermaid _is_ an animal.”

“Not if she can speak,” said Kathleen. “I say, don’t you think we ought

to wear our best things—I do. It’s more respectable to the wonders of

the deep. She’d like us to look beautiful.”

“I’m not going to change for anybody,” said Bernard firmly.

“All right, Bear,” said Mavis. “Only we will. Remember it’s magic.”

“I say, France,” he said, “do you think we _ought_ to change?”

“No, I don’t,” Francis answered. “I don’t believe Mermaids care a bit

what you’ve got on. You see, they don’t wear anything but tails and

hair and looking glasses themselves. If there’s any beautifulness to be

done they jolly well do it themselves. But I don’t say you wouldn’t be

better for washing your hands again, and you might as well try to get

_some_ of the sand out of your hair. It looks like the wrong end of a

broom as it is.”

He himself went so far as to put on the blue necktie that Aunt Amy had

given him, and polished his silver watch chain on the inside of his

jacket. This helped to pass the time till the girls were ready. At

last this happened though they had put on their best things, and they

started.

The yellowhammer went on about himself—he was never tired of the

subject.

“It’s just as if that bird was making fun of us,” Bernard said.

“I daresay it is a wild-goose step we’re taking,” said Kathleen; “but

the circus will be jolly, anyhow.”

There is a piece of wasteland just beyond Beachfield on the least

agreeable side of that village—the side where the flat-faced shops are

and the yellow brick houses. At the nice end of Beachfield the shops

have little fat bow windows with greenish glass that you can hardly

see through. Here also are gaunt hoardings plastered with tattered,

ugly-colored posters, asking you in red to wear Ramsden’s Really Boots

or to Vote for Wilton Ashby in blue. Some of the corners of the posters

are always loose and flap dismally in the wind. There is always a good

deal of straw and torn paper and dust at this end of the village, and

bits of dirty rag, and old boots and tins are found under the hedges

where flowers ought to be. Also there are a great many nettles and

barbed wires instead of pleasant-colored fences. Don’t you sometimes

wonder who is to blame for all the uglification of places that might

be so pretty, and wish you could have a word with them and ask them

not to? Perhaps when these people were little nobody told them how

wrong it is to throw orange peel about, and the bits of paper off

chocolate, and the paper bag which once concealed your bun. And it is a

dreadful fact that the children who throw these things about are little

uglifiers, and they grow up to be perfect monsters of uglification, and

build hideous yellow brick cottages, and put up hoardings, and sell

Ramsden’s Really Boots (in red), and vote passionately for Wilton

Ashby (in blue), and care nothing for the fields that used to be green

and the hedges where once flowers used to grow. Some people like

this, and see nothing to hate in such ugly waste places as the one,

at the wrong end of the town, where the fair was being held on that

never-to-be-forgotten day when Francis, Mavis, Bernard and Kathleen set

out in their best clothes to rescue the Mermaid because Mermaids “die

in captivity.”

The fair had none of those stalls and booths which old-fashioned

fairs used to have, where they sold toys, and gilt gingerbread, and

carters’ whips, and cups and saucers, and mutton pies, and dolls, and

china dogs, and shell boxes, and pincushions, and needle cases, and

penholders with views of the Isle of Wight and Winchester Cathedral

inside that you see so bright and plain when you put your eye close to

the little round hole at the top.

The steam roundabouts were there—but hardly a lean back of their

spotted horses was covered by a rider. There were swings, but no one

happened to be swinging. There were no shows, no menagerie, no boxing

booth, no marionettes. No penny gaff with the spangled lady and the

fat man who beats the drum. Nor were there any stalls. There were

pink-and-white paper whips and bags of dust-colored minced paper—the

English substitute for _confetti_—there were little metal tubes of

dirty water to squirt in people’s faces, but except for the sale of

these crude instruments for making other people uncomfortable there was

not a stall in the fair. I give you my word, there was not a single

thing that you could buy—no gingerbread, no sweets, no crockery dogs,

not even a half-penny orange or a bag of nuts. Nor was there anything

to drink—not as much as a lemonade counter or a ginger beer stall.

The revelers were no doubt drinking elsewhere. A tomblike silence

reigned—a silence which all the steam roundabout’s hideous hootings

only emphasized.

A very dirty-nosed boy, overhearing a hurried council, volunteered the

information that the circus had not yet opened.

“Never mind,” they told each other—and turned to the sideshows. These

were all of one character—the arrangement by which you throw something

or roll something at something else, and if you hit the something you

get a prize—the sort of prize that is sold in Houndsditch at ninepence

a gross.

Most of these arrangements are so ordered that to get a prize is

impossible. For instance, a peculiarly offensive row of masks with open

mouths in which pipes are set up. In the golden days of long ago if you

hit a pipe it broke—and you got a “prize” worth—I can’t do sums—put

it briefly at the hundred and forty-fourth part of ninepence. But the

children found that when their wooden ball struck the pipe it didn’t

break. They wondered why! Then, looking more closely, they saw that

the pipes were not of clay, but of painted wood. They could never be

broken—and the whole thing was a cruel mockery of hope.

The coconut-shy was not what it used to be either. Once one threw

sticks, three shies a penny. Now it is a penny a shy, with light wooden

balls. You can win a coconut if you happen to hit one that is not glued

onto its support. If you really wish to win one of these unkindly

fruits it is well to stand and watch a little and not to aim at those

coconuts which, when they are hit, fail to fall off the sticks. Are

they glued on? One hopes not. But if they are, who can wonder or

reprove? It is hard to get a living, anyhow.

There was one thing, though, that roused the children’s

resentment—chiefly, I think, because its owners were clean and did not

look half-starved, so there was no barrier of pity between them and

dislike—a sort of round table sloping up to its center. On this small

objects were arranged. For a penny you received two hoops. If you could

throw a hoop over an object that object was yours. None of the rustic

visitors to the fair could, it seemed, or cared to. It did not look

difficult, however. Nor was it. At the first shot a tiny candlestick

was encircled. Between pride and shame Mavis held out a hand.

“Hard luck,” said one of the two young women, too clean to be pitied.

“Has to go flat on—see?”

Francis tried again. This time the ring encircled a matchbox, “flat on.”

“Hard luck,” said the lady again.

“What’s the matter now?” the children asked, baffled.

“Hoop has to be red side up,” said she. So she scored. Now they went

to the other side and had another penn’orth of hoops from the other

too clean young woman. And the same thing happened. Only on the second

winning she said:

“Hard luck. Hoops have to be blue side up.”

It was Bernard’s blood that was up. He determined to clear the board.

“Blue side up, is it,” he said sternly, and took another penn’orth.

This time he brought down a tin pin tray and a little box which, I

hope, contained something. The girl hesitated and then handed over the

prizes. “Another penn’orth of hoops,” said Bernard, warming to the work.

“Hard luck,” said she. “We don’t give more than two penn’orth to any

one party.”

The prizes were not the kind of things you care to keep, even as

trophies of victory—especially when you have before you the business

of rescuing a Mermaid. The children gave their prizes to a small

female bystander and went to the shooting gallery. That, at least,

could have no nonsense about it. If you aimed at a bottle and hit it

it would break. No sordid self-seeking custodian could rob you of the

pleasant tinkling of the broken bottle. And even with a poor weapon

it is not impossible to aim at a bottle and hit it. This is true—but

at the shooting gallery the trouble was _not_ to hit the bottles.

There were so many of them and they were so near. The children got

thirteen tinkling smashes for their fourteen shots. The bottles were

hung fifteen feet away instead of thirty. Why? Space is not valuable at

the fair—can it be that the people of Sussex are such poor shots that

thirty feet is to them a prohibitive distance?

They did not throw for coconuts, nor did they ride on the little horses

or pull themselves to dizzy heights in the swings. There was no heart

left in them for such adventures—and besides everyone in the fair,

saving themselves and the small female bystander and the hoop girls,

was dirtier than you would believe possible. I suppose Beachfield has

a water supply. But you would have doubted it if you had been at the

fair. They heard no laughter, no gay talk, no hearty give-and-take of

holiday jests. A dull heavy silence brooded over the place, and you

could hear that silence under the shallow insincere gaiety of the steam

roundabout.

Laughter and song, music and good-fellowship, dancing and innocent

revelry, there were none of these at Beachfield Fair. For music

there was the steam roundabout’s echoes of the sordid musical comedy

of the year before the year before last—laughter there was not—nor

revelry—only the dirty guardians of the machines for getting your

pennies stood gloomily huddled, and a few groups of dejected girls

and little boys shivered in the cold wind that had come up with the

sunset. In that wind, too, danced the dust, the straw, the newspaper

and the chocolate wrappers. The only dancing there was. The big tent

that held the circus was at the top of the ground, and the people who

were busy among the ropes and pegs and between the bright vans resting

on their shafts seemed gayer and cleaner than the people who kept

the little arrangements for people not to win prizes at. And now the

circus at last was opened; the flap of the tent was pinned back, and

a gypsy-looking woman, with oily black ringlets and eyes like bright

black beads, came out at the side to take the money of those who wished

to see the circus. People were now strolling toward it in twos and

threes, and of these our four were the very first, and the gypsy woman

took four warm sixpences from their four hands.

“Walk in, walk in, my little dears, and see the white elephant,” said

a stout, black-mustached man in evening dress—greenish it was and

shiny about the seams. He flourished a long whip as he spoke, and the

children stopped, although they had paid their sixpences, to hear what

they were to see when they did walk in. “The white elephant—tail,

trunk, and tusks all complete, sixpence only. See the Back Try A

or Camels, or Ships of the Arabs—heavy drinker when he gets the

chance—total abstainer while crossing the desert. Walk up, walk up. See

the Trained Wolves and Wolverines in their great National Dance with

the flags of all countries. Walk up, walk up, walk up. See the Educated

Seals and the Unique Lotus of the Heast in her famous bare-backed act,

riding three horses at once, the wonder and envy of royalty. Walk up

and see the very table Mermaid caught on your own coast only yesterday

as ever was.”

“Thank you,” said Francis, “I think we will.” And the four went through

the opened canvas into the pleasant yellow dusty twilight which was

the inside of a squarish sort of tent, with an opening at the end, and

through that opening you could see the sawdust-covered ring of the

circus and benches all around it, and two men just finishing covering

the front benches with red cotton strips.

“Where’s the Mermaid?” Mavis asked a little boy in tights and a

spangled cap.

“In there,” he said, pointing to a little canvas door at the side of

the squarish tent. “I don’t advise you to touch her, though. Spiteful,

she is. Lashes out with her tail—splashed old Mother Lee all over water

she did—an’ dangerous too: our Bill ’e got ’is bone set out in his

wrist a-trying to hold on to her. An’ it’s thruppence extry to see her

close.”

There are times, as we all know, when threepence extra is a baffling

obstacle—a cruel barrier to desire, but this was not, fortunately, such

a moment. The children had plenty of money, because Mother had given

them two half-crowns between them to spend as they liked.

“Even then,” said Bernard, in allusion to the threepence extra, “we

shall have two bob left.”

So Mavis, who was treasurer, paid over the extra threepences to a girl

with hair as fair and lank as hemp, and a face as brown and round as

a tea cake, who sat on a kitchen chair by the Mermaid door. Then one

by one they went in through the narrow opening, and at last there they

were alone in the little canvas room with a tank in it that held—well,

there was a large label, evidently written in a hurry, for the letters

were badly made and arranged quite crookedly, and this label declared:

REAL LIVE MERMAID.

SAID TO BE FABULUS, BUT NOW TRUE.

CAUGHT HERE.

PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH.

DANGEROUS.

The little Spangled Boy had followed them in and pointed to the last

word.

“What I tell you?” he asked proudly.

The children looked at each other. Nothing could be done with this

witness at hand. At least....

“Perhaps if it’s going to be magic,” Mavis whispered to Francis,

“outsiders wouldn’t notice. They don’t sometimes—I believe. Suppose you

just said a bit of ‘Sabrina’ to start the magic.”

“Wouldn’t be safe,” Francis returned in the same low tones. “Suppose he

_wasn’t_ an outsider, and _did_ notice.”

So there they stood helpless. What the label was hung on was a large

zinc tank—the kind that they have at the tops of houses for the water

supply—you must have seen one yourself often when the pipes burst in

frosty weather, and your father goes up into the roof of the house with

a candle and pail, and the water drips through the ceilings and the

plumber is sent for, and comes when it suits him. The tank was full

of water and at the bottom of it could be seen a mass of something

dark that looked as if it were partly browny-green fish and partly

greeny-brown seaweed.

“Sabrina fair,” Francis suddenly whispered, “send him away.”

And immediately a voice from outside called “Rube—Reuben—drat the boy,

where’s he got to?”—and the little spangled intruder had to go.

“There, now,” said Mavis, “if _that_ isn’t magic!” Perhaps it was, but

still the dark fish-and-seaweed heap in the tank had not stirred. “Say

it all through,” said Mavis.

“Yes, do,” said Bernard, “then we shall know for certain whether it’s a

seal or not.”

So once again—

“‘_Sabrina fair,

Listen where thou art sitting,

Under the glassie, cool, translucent wave_,’”

He got no further. There was a heaving and stirring of the seaweed and

fish tail, something gleamed white, through the brown something white

parted the seaweed, two white hands parted it, and a face came to the

surface of the rather dirty water and—there was no doubt about it—spoke.

“‘Translucent wave,’indeed!” was what the face said. “I wonder you’re

not ashamed to speak the invocation over a miserable cistern like this.

What do you want?”

Brown hair and seaweed still veiled most of the face, but all the

children, who, after their first start back had pressed close to the

tank again, could see that the face looked exceedingly cross.

“We want,” said Francis in a voice that would tremble though he told

himself again and again that he was not a baby and wasn’t going to

behave like one—“we want to help you.”

“Help _me_? You?” She raised herself a little more in the tank and

looked contemptuously at them. “Why, don’t you know that I am mistress

of all water magic? I can raise a storm that will sweep away this

horrible place and my detestable captors and you with them, and carry

me on the back of a great wave down to the depths of the sea.”

“Then why on earth don’t you?” Bernard asked.

“Well, I was thinking about it,” she said, a little awkwardly, “when

you interrupted with your spells. Well, you’ve called and I’ve

answered—now tell me what I can do for you.”

“We’ve told you,” said Mavis gently enough, though she was frightfully

disappointed that the Mermaid after having in the handsomest manner

turned out to be a Mermaid, should be such a very short-tempered one.

And when they had talked about her all day and paid the threepence each

extra to see her close, and put on their best white dresses too. “We’ve

told you—we want to help you. Another Sabrina in the sea told us to.

_She_ didn’t tell us anything about you being a magic-mistress. She

just said ‘they die in captivity.’”

[Illustration: “_‘Translucent wave,’ indeed!_”]

“Well, thank you for coming,” said the Mermaid. “If she really said

that it must be one of two things—either the sun is in the House of

Liber—which is impossible at this time of the year—or else the rope I

was caught with must be made of llama’s hair, and _that’s_ impossible

in these latitudes. Do you know anything about the rope they caught me

with?”

“No,” said Bernard and Kathleen. But the others said, “It was a lariat.”

“Ah,” said the Mermaid, “my worst fears are confirmed—But who could

have expected a lariat on these shores? But that must have been it. Now

I know why, though I have been on the point of working the magic of the

Great Storm at least five hundred times since my capture, some unseen

influence has always held me back.”

“You mean,” said Bernard, “you feel that it wouldn’t work, so you

didn’t try.”

A rattling, ripping sound outside, beginning softly, waxed louder and

louder so as almost to drown their voices. It was the drum, and it

announced the beginning of the circus. The Spangled Child put his head

in and said, “Hurry up or you’ll miss my Infant Prodigious Act on the

Horse with the Tambourines,” and took his head out again.

“Oh, dear,” said Mavis, “and we haven’t arranged a single thing about

rescuing you.”

“No more you have,” said the Mermaid carelessly.

“Look here,” said Francis, “you do _want_ to be rescued, don’t you?

“Of course I do,” replied the Mermaid impatiently, “now I know about

the llama rope. But I can’t walk even if they’d let me, and you

couldn’t carry me. Couldn’t you come at dead of night with a chariot—I

could lift myself into it with your aid—then you could drive swiftly

hence, and driving into the sea I could drop from the chariot and

escape while you swam ashore.”

“I don’t believe we could—any of it,” said Bernard, “let alone swimming

ashore with horses and chariots. Why, Pharaoh himself couldn’t do that,

you know.” And even Mavis and Francis added helplessly, “I don’t see

how we’re to get a chariot,” and “do you think of some other way.”

“I shall await you,” said the lady in the tank with perfect calmness,

“at dead of night.”

With that she twisted the seaweed closely around her head and shoulders

and sank slowly to the bottom of the tank. And the children were left

staring blankly at each other, while in the circus tent music sounded

and the soft heavy pad-pad of hoofs on sawdust.

“What shall we do?” Francis broke the silence.

“Go and see the circus, of course,” said Bernard.

“Of course we can talk about the chariot afterward,” Mavis admitted.

“There’ll be lots of time to talk between now and dead of night,” said

Kathleen. “Come on, Bear.”

And they went.

There is nothing like a circus for making you forget your anxieties.

It is impossible to dwell on your troubles and difficulties when

performing dogs are displaying their accomplishments, and wolves

dancing their celebrated dance with the flags of all nations, and

the engaging lady who jumps through the paper hoops and comes down

miraculously on the flat back of the white horse, cannot but drive

dull care away, especially from the minds of the young. So that for an

hour and a half—it really was a good circus, and I can’t think how it

happened to be at Beachfield Fair at all—a solid slab of breathless

enjoyment was wedged in between the interview with the Mermaid and

the difficult task of procuring for her the chariot she wanted. But

when it was all over and they were part of a hot, tightly packed crowd

pouring out of the dusty tent into the sunshine, their responsibilities

came upon them with renewed force.

“Wasn’t the clown ripping?” said Bernard, as they got free of the crowd.

“I liked the riding-habit lady best, and the horse that went like that,

best,” said Kathleen, trying with small pale hands and brown shod legs

to give an example of a horse’s conduct during an exhibition of the

_haute école_.

“Didn’t you think the elephant—” Mavis was beginning, when Francis

interrupted her.

“About that chariot,” he said, and after that they talked of nothing

else. And whatever they said it always came to this in the end, that

they hadn’t got a chariot, and couldn’t get a chariot, and that anyhow

they didn’t suppose there was a chariot to be got, at any rate in

Beachfield.

“It wouldn’t be any good, I suppose,” said Kathleen’s last and most

helpful suggestion—“be the slightest good saying ‘Sabrina fair’ to a

pumpkin?”

“We haven’t got even a pumpkin,” Bernard reminded her, “let alone the

rats and mice and lizards that Cinderella had. No, that’s no good. But

I’ll tell you what.” He stopped short. They were near home now—it was

late afternoon, in the road where the talkative yellowhammer lived.

“What about a wheelbarrow?”

“Not big enough,” said Francis.

“There’s an extra big one in the mill,” said Bernard. “Now, look here.

I’m not any good at magic. But Uncle Tom said I was a born general. If

I tell you exactly what to do, will you two do it, and let Cathay and

me off going?”

“Going to sneak out of it?” Francis asked bitterly.

“It isn’t. It’s not my game at all, and I don’t want to play. And if I

do, the whole thing will be muffed—you know it will. I’m so unlucky.

You’d never get out at dead of night without me dropping a boot on the

stairs or sneezing—you know you wouldn’t.”

Bernard took a sort of melancholy pride in being the kind of boy

who always gets caught. If you are that sort of boy, perhaps that’s

the best way to take it. And Francis could not deny that there was

something in what he said. He went on: “Then Kathleen’s my special

sister and I’m not going to have her dragged into a row. (“I want to,”

Kathleen put in ungratefully.) So will you and Mavis do it on your own

or not?”

After some discussion, in which Kathleen was tactfully dealt with, it

was agreed that they would. Then Bernard unfolded his plan of campaign.

“Directly we get home,” he said, “we’ll begin larking about with that

old wheelbarrow—giving each other rides, and so on, and when it’s time

to go in we’ll leave it at the far end of the field behind the old

sheep hut near the gate. Then it’ll be handy for you at dead of night.

You must take towels or something and tie around the wheel so that it

doesn’t make a row. You can sleep with my toy alarm under your pillow

and it won’t wake anyone but you. You get out through the dining room

window and in the same way. I’ll lend you my new knife, with three

blades and a corkscrew, if you’ll take care of it, to cut the canvas,

and go by the back lane that comes out behind where the circus is, but

if you took my advice you wouldn’t go at all. She’s not a nice Mermaid

at all. I’d rather have had a seal, any day. Hullo, there’s Daddy and

Mother. Come on.”

They came on.

The program sketched by Bernard was carried out without a hitch.

Everything went well, only Francis and Mavis were both astonished to

find themselves much more frightened than they had expected to be. Any

really great adventure like the rescuing of a Mermaid does always look

so very much more serious when you carry it out, at night, than it did

when you were planning it in the daytime. Also, though they knew they

were not doing anything wrong, they had an uncomfortable feeling that

Mother and Daddy might not agree with them on that point. And of course

they could not ask leave to go and rescue a Mermaid, with a chariot,

at dead of night. It is not the sort of thing you can ask leave to do,

somehow. And the more you explained your reasons the less grown-up

people would think you fit to conduct such an expedition.

Francis lay down fully dressed, under his nightshirt. And Mavis under

hers wore her short blue skirt and jersey. The alarm, true to its

trust, went off into an ear-splitting whizz and bang under the pillow

of Francis, but no one else heard it. He crept cautiously into Mavis’s

room and wakened her, and as they crept down in stockinged feet not a

board creaked. The French window opened without noise, the wheelbarrow

was where they had left it, and they had fortunately brought quite

enough string to bind wads of towels and stockings to the tire of its

wheel. Also they had not forgotten the knife.

The wheelbarrow was heavy and they rather shrank from imagining how

much heavier it would be when the discontented Mermaid was curled up in

it. However, they took it in turns, and got along all right by the back

lane that comes out above the waste ground where Beachfield holds its

fairs.

“I hope the night’s dead enough,” Mavis whispered as the circus came in

sight, looking very white in the starlight, “it’s nearly two by now I

should think.”

“Quite dead enough, if that’s all,” said Francis; “but suppose the

gypsies are awake? They do sit up to study astronomy to tell fortunes

with, don’t they? Suppose this is their astronomy night? I vote we

leave the barrow here and go and reconnoiter.”

They did. Their sandshoes made no noise on the dewy grass, and treading

very carefully, on tiptoe, they came to the tent. Francis nearly

tumbled over a guy rope; he just saw it in time to avoid it.

“If I’d been Bernard I should have come a beastly noisy cropper over

that,” he told himself. They crept around the tent till they came to

the little square bulge that marked the place where the tank was and

the seaweed and the Mermaid.

“They die in captivity, they die in captivity, they die in captivity,”

Mavis kept repeating to herself, trying to keep up her courage by

reminding herself of the desperately urgent nature of the adventure.

“It’s a matter of life and death,” she told herself—“life and death.”

And now they picked their way between the pegs and guy ropes and came

quite close to the canvas. Doubts of the strength and silence of the

knife possessed the trembling soul of Francis. Mavis’s heart was

beating so thickly that, as she said afterward, she could hardly hear

herself think. She scratched gently on the canvas, while Francis felt

for the knife with the three blades and the corkscrew. An answering

signal from the imprisoned Mermaid would, she felt, give her fresh

confidence. There was no answering scratch. Instead, a dark line

appeared to run up the canvas—it was an opening made by the two hands

of the Mermaid which held back the two halves of the tent side, cut

neatly from top to bottom. Her white face peered out.

“Where is the chariot?” she asked in the softest of whispers, but

not too soft to carry to the children the feeling that she was, if

possible, crosser than ever.

Francis was afraid to answer. He knew that his voice could never be

subdued to anything as soft as the voice that questioned him, a voice

like the sound of tiny waves on a summer night, like the whisper of

wheat when the wind passes through it on a summer morning. But he

pointed toward the lane where they had left the wheelbarrow and he and

Mavis crept away to fetch it.

As they wheeled it down the waste place both felt how much they owed to

Bernard. But for his idea of muffling the wheel they could never have

got the clumsy great thing down that bumpy uneven slope. But as it was

they and the barrow stole toward the gypsy’s tent as silently as the

Arabs in the poem stole away with theirs, and they wheeled it close to

the riven tent side. Then Mavis scratched again, and again the tent

opened.

“Have you any cords?” the soft voice whispered, and Francis pulled what

was left of the string from his pocket.

She had made two holes in the tent side, and now passing the string

through these she tied back the flaps of the tent.

“Now,” she said, raising herself in the tank and resting her hands on

its side. “You must both help—take hold of my tail and lift. Creep

in—one on each side.”

It was a wet, sloppy, slippery, heavy business, and Mavis thought her

arms would break, but she kept saying: “Die in captivity,” and just as

she was feeling that she could not bear it another minute the strain

slackened and there was the Mermaid curled up in the barrow.

“Now,” said the soft voice, “go—quickly.”

It was all very well to say go quickly. It was as much as the two

children could do, with that barrow-load of dripping Mermaid, to go at

all. And very, very slowly they crept up the waste space. In the lane,

under cover of the tall hedges, they paused.

“Go on,” said the Mermaid.

“We can’t till we’ve rested a bit,” said Mavis, panting. “How did you

manage to get that canvas cut?”

“My shell knife, of course,” said the person in the wheelbarrow. “We

always carry one in our hair, in case of sharks.”

“I see,” said Francis, breathing heavily.

“You had much better go on,” said the barrow’s occupant. “This chariot

is excessively uncomfortable and much too small. Besides, delays are

dangerous.”

“We’ll go in half a sec,” said Francis, and Mavis added kindly:

“You’re really quite safe now, you know.”

“_You_ aren’t,” said the Mermaid. “I don’t know whether you realize

that I’m stolen property and that it will be extremely awkward for you

if you are caught with me.”

“But we shan’t be caught with you,” said Mavis hopefully.

“Everybody’s sound asleep,” said Francis. It was wonderful how brave

and confident they felt now that the deed was done. “It’s perfectly

safe—Oh, what’s that! Oh!”

A hand had shot from the black shadow of the hedge and caught him by

the arm.

“What is it, France? What is it?” said Mavis, who could not see what

was happening.

“What is it—now what is it?” asked the Mermaid more crossly than she

had yet spoken.

“_Who_ is it? Oh, who is it?” gasped Francis, writhing in the grip of

his invisible assailant. And from the dark shadow of the hedge came the

simple and terrible reply:

“The police!”

CHAPTER FOUR

_Gratitude_

IT IS HARDLY POSSIBLE to imagine a situation less attractive than that

of Mavis and Francis—even the position of the Mermaid curled up in a

dry barrow and far from her native element was not exactly luxurious.

Still, she was no worse off than she had been when the lariat first

curled itself about her fishy extremity. But the children! They had

braved the terrors of night in an adventure of singular courage and

daring, they had carried out their desperate enterprise, the Mermaid

was rescued, and success seemed near—no further off than the sea

indeed, and that, in point of fact, was about a quarter of a mile away.

To be within a quarter of a mile of achievement, and then to have the

cup of victory dashed from your lips, the crown of victory torn from

your brow by—the police!

It was indeed hard. And what was more, it was dangerous.

“We shall pass the night in the cells,” thought Mavis, in agony; “and

whatever will Mother do when she finds we’re gone?” In her mind “the

cells” were underground dungeons, dark and damp and vaulted, where

toads and lizards crawled, and no daylight ever penetrated. That is

how dungeons are described in books about the Inquisition.

When the voice from the bush had said “The police,” a stricken silence

followed. The mouth of Francis felt dry inside, just as if he had been

eating cracknels, he explained afterward, and he had to swallow nothing

before he could say:

“What for?”

“Let go his arm,” said Mavis to the hidden foe. “We won’t run away.

Really we won’t.”

“You can’t,” said the Mermaid. “You can’t leave me.”

“Leave go,” said Francis, wriggling. And then suddenly Mavis made a

dart at the clutching hand and caught it by the wrist and whispered

savagely:

“It’s not a policeman at all. Come out of that bush—come out,” and

dragged. And something did come out of the bush. Something that

certainly was not a policeman. It was small and thin, whereas policemen

are almost always tall and stout. It did not wear the blue coats our

Roberts wear, but velveteen knickerbockers and a tweed jacket. It was,

in fact, a very small boy.

Francis broke into a cackle of relief.

“You little—animal,” he said. “What a fright you gave me.”

“Animal yourself, if you come to that, let alone her and her tail,” the

boy answered; and Mavis thought his voice didn’t sound unfriendly. “My!

But I did take a rise out of you that time, eh? Ain’t she bit you yet,

nor yet strook you with that there mackerel-end of hers?”

And then they recognized him. It was the little Spangled Boy. Only now,

of course, being off duty he was no more spangled than you and I are.

“Whatever did you do it for?” Mavis asked crossly. “It was horrid of

you.”

“It wasn’t only just a lark,” said the boy. “I cut around and listened

this afternoon when you was jawing, and I thought why not be in it?

Only I do sleep that heavy, what with the riding and the tumbling and

all. So I didn’t wake till you’d got her out and then I cut up along

ahind the hedge to be beforehand with you. An’ I was. It was a fair

cop, matey, eh?”

“What are you going to do about it?” Francis asked flatly; “tell your

father?” But Mavis reflected that he didn’t seem to have told his

father yet, and perhaps wouldn’t.

“Ain’t got no father,” said the Spangled Boy, “nor yet mother.”

“If you are rested enough you’d better go on,” said the Mermaid. “I’m

getting dry through.”

And Mavis understood that to her that was as bad as getting wet through

would be to us.

“I’m so sorry,” she said gently, “but—”

“I must say I think it’s very inconsiderate of you to keep me all this

time in the dry,” the Mermaid went on. “I really should have thought

that even _you_—”

But Francis interrupted her.

“What are you going to _do_?” he asked the Spangled Boy. And that

surprising child answered, spitting on his hands and rubbing them:

“Do? Why, give a ’and with the barrer.”

The Mermaid put out a white arm and touched him.

“You are a hero,” she said. “I can recognize true nobility even under a

once-spangled exterior. You may kiss my hand.”

“Well, of all the, ...” said Francis.

“Shall I?” the boy asked, more of himself than of the others.

“Do,” Mavis whispered. “Anything to keep her in a good temper.”

So the Spangled Boy kissed the still dampish hand of the Lady from

the Sea, took the handles of the barrow and off they all went.

[Illustration: “_The police._”]

Mavis and Francis were too thankful for this unexpected help to ask any

questions, though they could not help wondering exactly what it felt

like to be a boy who did not mind stealing his own father’s Mermaid. It

was the boy himself who offered, at the next rest-halt, an explanation.

“You see,” he said, “it’s like this here. This party in the barrow—”

“I know you don’t mean it disrespectfully,” said the Mermaid, sweetly;

“but _not_ party—and _not_ a barrow.”

“Lady,” suggested Mavis.

“This lydy in the chariot, she’d been kidnapped—that’s how I look at

it. Same as what I was.”

This was romance indeed; and Mavis recognized it and said:

“You, kidnapped? I say!”

“Yus,” said Spangles, “when I was a baby kid. Old Mother Romaine told

me, just afore she was took all down one side and never spoke no more.”

“But why?” Mavis asked. “I never could understand in the books why

gypsies kidnapped babies. They always seem to have so many of their

own—far, far more than anyone could possibly want.”

“Yes, indeed,” said the Mermaid, “they prodded at me with sticks—a

multitude of them.”

“It wasn’t kids as was wanted,” said the boy, “it was revenge. That’s

what Mother Romaine said—my father he was a sort of Beak, so he give

George Lee eighteen months for poaching. An’ the day they took him the

church bells was ringing like mad, and George, as he was being took, he

said: ‘What’s all that row? It ain’t Sunday.’ And then they tells him

as how the bells was ringing ’cause him that was the Beak—my father,

you know—he’d got a son and hare. And that was me. You wouldn’t think

it to look at me,” he added, spitting pensively and taking up the

barrow handles, “but I’m a son and hare.”

“And then what happened?” Mavis asked as they trudged on.

“Oh, George—he done his time, and I was a kiddy then, year-and-a-half

old, all lace and ribbons and blue shoes made of glove-stuff, and

George pinched me, and it makes me breff short, wheeling and talking.”

“Pause and rest, my spangled friend,” said the Mermaid in a voice of

honey, “and continue your thrilling narrative.”

“There ain’t no more to it,” said the boy, “except that I got one of

the shoes. Old Mother Romaine ’ad kep’ it, and a little shirt like a

lady’s handkercher, with R. V. on it in needlework. She didn’t ever

tell me what part of the country my dad was Beak in. Said she’d tell

me next day. An’ then there wasn’t no next day for her—not fer telling

things in, there wasn’t.”

He rubbed his sleeve across his eyes.

“She wasn’t half a bad sort,” he explained.

“Don’t cry,” said Mavis unwisely.

“Cry? Me?” he answered scornfully. “I’ve got a cold in me ’ead. You

oughter know the difference between a cold in the head and sniveling.

You been to school, I lay?—they might have taught you that.”

“I wonder the gypsies didn’t take the shoe and the shirt away from you?”

“Nobody know’d I’d got ’em; I always kep’ ’em inside my shirt, wrapt

up in a bit of paper, and when I put on me tights I used to hide ’em.

I’m a-going to take the road one of these days, and find out who it was

lost a kid with blue shoes and shirt nine years come April.”

“Then you’re ten and a half,” said Mavis.

And the boy answered admiringly:

“How do you do it in your head so quick, miss? Yes, that’s what I am.”

Here the wheelbarrow resumed its rather bumpety progress, and nothing

more could be said till the next stoppage, which was at that spot where

the sea-front road swings around and down, and glides into the beach so

gently that you can hardly tell where one begins and the other ends.

It was much lighter there than up on the waste space. The moon was

just breaking through a fluffy white cloud and cast a trembling sort

of reflection on the sea. As they came down the slope all hands were

needed to steady the barrow, because as soon as she saw the sea the

Mermaid began to jump up and down like a small child at a Christmas

tree.

“Oh, look!” she cried, “isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t it the only home in

the world?”

“Not quite,” said the boy.

“Ah!” said the lady in the barrow, “Of course you’re heir to one of

the—what is it...?”

“‘Stately homes of England—how beautiful they stand,’” said Mavis.

“Yes,” said the lady. “I knew by instinct that he was of noble birth.”

_“‘I bid ye take care of the brat,’ said he,

‘For he comes of a noble race,’”_

* * * * *

Francis hummed. He was feeling a little cross and sore. He and Mavis

had had all the anxious trouble of the adventure, and now the Spangled

Boy was the only one the Mermaid was nice to. It was certainly hard.

“But your stately home would not do for me at all,” she went on. “My

idea of home is all seaweed of coral and pearl—so cosy and delightful

and wet. Now—can you push the chariot to the water’s edge, or will you

carry me?”

“Not much we won’t,” the Spangled Boy answered firmly. “We’ll push you

as far as we can, and then you’ll have to wriggle.”

“I will do whatever you suggest,” she said amiably; “but what is this

wriggle of which you speak?”

“Like a worm,” said Francis.

“Or an eel,” said Mavis.

“Nasty low things,” said the Mermaid; and the children never knew

whether she meant the worm and the eel, or the girl and the boy.

“Now then. All together,” said the Spangled Child. And the barrow

bumped down to the very edge of the rocks. And at the very edge its

wheel caught in a chink and the barrow went sideways. Nobody could help

it, but the Mermaid was tumbled out of her chariot on to the seaweed.

The seaweed was full and cushiony and soft, and she was not hurt at

all—but she was very angry.

“You have been to school,” she said, “as my noble preserver reminds

you. You might have learned how not to upset chariots.”

“It’s we who are your preservers,” Francis couldn’t help saying.

“Of course you are,” she said coolly, “plain preservers. Not noble

ones. But I forgive you. You can’t help being common and clumsy. I

suppose it’s your nature—just as it’s his to be....”

“Good-bye,” said Francis, firmly.

“Not at all,” said the lady. “You must come with me in case there

are any places where I can’t exercise the elegant and vermiform

accomplishment you spoke about. Now, one on each side, and one behind,

and don’t walk on my tail. You can’t think how annoying it is to have

your tail walked on.”

[Illustration: _And disappeared entirely._]