“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
