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. …”
“Goodbye,” 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.”
“Oh, can’t I,” said Mavis. “I’ll tell you something. My mother has a tail too.”
“I say!” said Francis.
But the Spangled Child understood.
“She don’t wear it every day, though,” he said; and Mavis is almost sure that he winked. Only it is so difficult to be sure about winks in the starlight.
“Your mother must be better born than I supposed,” said the Mermaid. “Are you quite sure about the tail?”
“I’ve trodden on it often,” said Mavis—and then Francis saw.
Wriggling and sliding and pushing herself along by her hands, and helped now and then by the hands of the others, the Mermaid was at last got to the edge of the water.
“How glorious! In a moment I shall be quite wet,” she cried.
In a moment everyone else was quite wet also—for with a movement that was something between a squirm and a jump, she dropped from the edge with a splashing flop.
And disappeared entirely.
V
Consequences
The three children looked at each other.
“Well!” said Mavis.
“I do think she’s ungrateful,” said Francis.
“What did you expect?” asked the Spangled Child.
They were all wet through. It was very late—they were very tired, and the clouds were putting the moon to bed in a very great hurry. The Mermaid was gone; the whole adventure was ended.
There was nothing to do but to go home, and go to sleep, knowing that when they woke the next morning it would be to a day in the course of which they would have to explain their wet clothes to their parents.
“Even you’ll have to do that,” Mavis reminded the Spangled Boy.
He received her remark in what they afterward remembered to have been a curiously deep silence.
“I don’t know how on earth we are to explain,” said Francis. “I really don’t. Come on—let’s get home. No more adventures for me, thank you. Bernard knew what he was talking about.”
Mavis, very tired indeed, agreed.
They had got over the beach by this time, recovered the wheelbarrow, and trundled it up and along the road. At the corner the Spangled Boy suddenly said:
“Well then, so long, old sports,” and vanished down a side lane.
The other two went on together—with the wheelbarrow, which, I may remind you, was as wet as any of them.
They went along by the hedge and the mill and up to the house.
Suddenly Mavis clutched at her brother’s arm.
“There’s a light,” she said, “in the house.”
There certainly was, and the children experienced that terrible empty sensation only too well known to all of us—the feeling of the utterly-found-out.
They could not be sure which window it was, but it was a downstairs window, partly screened by ivy. A faint hope still buoyed up Francis of getting up to bed unnoticed by whoever it was that had the light; and he and his sister crept around to the window out of which they had crept; but such a very long time ago it seemed. The window was shut.
Francis suggested hiding in the mill and trying to creep in unobserved later on, but Mavis said:
“No. I’m too tired for anything. I’m too tired to live, I think. Let’s go and get it over, and then we can go to bed and sleep, and sleep, and sleep.”
So they went and peeped in at the kitchen window, and there was no one but Mrs. Pearce, and she had a fire lighted and was putting a big pot on it.
The children went to the back door and opened it.
“You’re early, for sure,” said Mrs. Pearce, not turning.
This seemed a bitter sarcasm. It was too much. Mavis answered it with a sob. And at that Mrs. Pearce turned very quickly.
“What to gracious!” she said—“whatever to gracious is the matter? Where’ve you been?” She took Mavis by the shoulder. “Why, you’re all sopping wet. You naughty, naughty little gell, you. Wait till I tell your Ma—been shrimping I lay—or trying to—never asking when the tide was right. And not a shrimp to show for it, I know, with the tide where it is. You wait till we hear what your Ma’s got to say about it. And look at my clean flags and you dripping all over ’em like a fortnight’s wash in wet weather.”
Mavis twisted a little in Mrs. Pearce’s grasp. “Oh, don’t scold us, dear Mrs. Pearce,” she said, putting a wet arm up toward Mrs. Pearce’s neck. “We are so miserable.”
“And so you deserve to be,” said Mrs. Pearce, smartly. “Here, young chap, you go into the washhouse and get them things off, and drop them outside the door, and have a good rub with the jack-towel; and little miss can undress by the fire and put hern in this clean pail—and I’ll pop up softlike and so as your Ma don’t hear, and bring you down something dry.”
A gleam of hope fell across the children’s hearts—a gleam wild and watery as that which the moonlight had cast across the sea, into which the Mermaid had disappeared. Perhaps after all Mrs. Pearce wasn’t going to tell Mother. If she was, why should she pop up
