The Rescue
astonished to find themselves much more frightened than they had expected to be. Any really great adventure like the rescuing of a Mermaid does always look so very much more serious when you carry it out, at night, than it did when you were planning it in the daytime. Also, though they knew they were not doing anything wrong, they had an uncomfortable feeling that Mother and Daddy might not agree with them on that point. And of course they could not ask leave to go and rescue a Mermaid, with a chariot, at dead of night. It is not the sort of thing you can ask leave to do, somehow. And the more you explained your reasons the less grown-up people would think you fit to conduct such an expedition.
Francis lay down fully dressed, under his nightshirt. And Mavis under hers wore her short blue skirt and jersey. The alarm, true to its trust, went off into an ear-splitting whizz and bang under the pillow of Francis, but no one else heard it. He crept cautiously into Mavis's room and wakened her, and as they crept down in stockinged feet not a board creaked. The French window opened without noise, the wheelbarrow was where they had left it, and they had fortunately brought quite enough string to bind wads of towels and stockings to the tire of its wheel. Also they had not forgotten the knife.
The wheelbarrow was heavy and they rather shrank from imagining how much heavier it would be when the discontented Mermaid was curled up in it. However, they took it in turns, and got along all right by the back lane that comes out above the waste ground where Beachfield holds its fairs.
"I hope the night's dead enough," Mavis whispered as the circus came in sight, looking very white in the starlight, "it's nearly two by now I should think."
"Quite dead enough, if that's all," said Francis; "but suppose
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