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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?”
“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,