The Rescue
thing 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.'"
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