The kitchen was a pleasant place, with bright brasses and shining crockery, and a round three-legged table with a clean cloth and blue-and-white teacups on it.
Mrs. Pearce came down with their nightgowns and the warm dressing gowns that Aunt Enid had put in in spite of their expressed wishes. How glad they were of them now!
“There, that’s a bit more like,” said Mrs. Pearce; “here, don’t look as if I was going to eat you, you little Peter Grievouses. I’ll hot up some milk and here’s a morsel of bread and dripping to keep the cold out. Lucky for you I was up—getting the boys’ breakfast ready. The boats’ll be in directly. The boys will laugh when I tell them—laugh fit to bust their selves they will.”
“Oh, don’t tell,” said Mavis, “don’t, please don’t. Please, please don’t.”
“Well, I like that,” said Mrs. Pearce, pouring herself some tea from a pot which, the children learned later, stood on the hob all day and most of the night; “it’s the funniest piece I’ve heard this many a day. Shrimping at high tide!”
“I thought,” said Mavis, “perhaps you’d forgive us, and dry our clothes, and not tell anybody.”
“Oh, you did, did you?” said Mrs. Pearce. “Anything else—?”
“No, nothing else, thank you,” said Mavis, “only I want to say thank you for being so kind, and it isn’t high tide yet, and please we haven’t done any harm to the barrow—but I’m afraid it’s rather wet, and we oughtn’t to have taken it without asking, I know, but you were in bed and—”
“The barrow?” Mrs. Pearce repeated. “That great hulking barrow—you took the barrow to bring the shrimps home in? No—I can’t keep it to myself—that really I can’t—” she lay back in the armchair and shook with silent laughter.
The children looked at each other. It is not pleasant to be laughed at, especially for something you have never done—but they both felt that Mrs. Pearce would have laughed quite as much, or even more, if they had told her what it really was they had wanted the barrow for.
“Oh, don’t go on laughing,” said Mavis, creeping close to Mrs. Pearce, “though you are a ducky darling not to be cross any more. And you won’t tell, will you?”
“Ah, well—I’ll let you off this time. But you’ll promise faithful never to do it again, now, won’t you?”
“We faithfully won’t ever,” said both children, earnestly.
“Then off you go to your beds, and I’ll dry the things when your Ma’s out. I’ll press ’em tomorrow morning while I’m waiting for the boys to come in.”
“You are an angel,” said Mavis, embracing her.
“More than you are then, you young limbs,” said Mrs. Pearce, returning the embrace. “Now off you go, and get what sleep you can.”
It was with a feeling that Fate had not, after all, been unduly harsh with them that Mavis and Francis came down to a very late breakfast.
“Your Ma and Pa’s gone off on their bikes,” said Mrs. Pearce, bringing in the eggs and bacon, “won’t be back till dinner. So I let you have your sleep out. The little ’uns had theirs three hours ago and out on the sands. I told them to let you sleep, though I know they wanted to hear how many shrimps you caught. I lay they expected a barrowful, same as what you did.”
“How did you know they knew we’d been out?” Francis asked.
“Oh, the way they was being secret in corners, and looking the old barrow all over was enough to make a cat laugh. Hurry up, now. I’ve got the washing-up to do—and your things is well-nigh dry.”
“You are a darling,” said Mavis. “Suppose you’d been different, whatever would have become of us?”
“You’d a got your desserts—bed and bread and water, instead of this nice egg and bacon and the sands to play on. So now you know,” said Mrs. Pearce.
On the sands they found Kathleen and Bernard, and it really now, in the bright warm sunshine, seemed almost worthwhile to have gone through last night’s adventures, if only for the pleasure of telling the tale of them to the two who had been safe and warm and dry in bed all the time.
“Though really,” said Mavis, when the tale was told, “sitting here and seeing the tents and the children digging, and the ladies knitting, and the gentlemen smoking and throwing stones, it does hardly seem as though there could be any magic. And yet, you know, there was.”
“It’s like I told you about radium and things,” said Bernard. “Things aren’t magic because they haven’t been found out yet. There’s always been Mermaids, of course, only people didn’t know it.”
“But she talks,” said Francis.
“Why not?” said Bernard placidly. “Even parrots do that.”
“But she talks English,” Mavis urged.
“Well,” said Bernard, unmoved, “what would you have had her talk?”
And so, in pretty sunshine, between blue sky and good sands, the adventure of the Mermaid seemed to come to an end, to be now only as a tale that is told. And when the four went slowly home to dinner all were, I think, a little sad that this should be so.
“Let’s go around and have a look at the empty barrow,” Mavis said; “it’ll bring it all back to us, and remind us of what was in it, like ladies’ gloves and troubadours.”
The barrow was where they had left it, but it was not empty. A very dirty piece of folded paper lay in it, addressed in penciled and uncertain characters
To France
To Be Opened.
Francis opened it and read aloud:
“I went back and she came back and she wants you to come back at ded of nite.
“Well, I shan’t go,” said Francis.
A voice from the bush by the gate made them all start.
“Don’t let on you see me,” said the Spangled Boy, putting his head out cautiously.
“You seem very fond of hiding in bushes,” said Francis.
“I am,” said the
