Fell over her white arm to make the gold strings.’
I thought, if her lover had been true, and had married the mermaid, how would the lady have enjoyed her new strange life on shore? After floating about serenely on summer seas, how would the mermaid have enjoyed being jolted along in an ekká Mr. Hartley saw that his son was not thinking alone of the fabled siren, and he observed with his quiet smile,—“Sad indeed for her to exchange her native element for another quite uncongenial, unless she were gifted with wings to raise her to one higher and purer than either water or earth.” “I think that Alicia has such wings,” said Robin more gravely: “she seems to be truly, earnestly pious. Had she not been so, she would never have been Harold’s choice. Alicia spoke to me so nicely about helping in mission work. She has begun to read the Bible to her ayah, and has learned by heart all the first part of the parable of the Prodigal Son—in Urdu.” “Good!” was Mr. Hartley’s laconic comment. “Alicia speaks the language like—well, of course not like a native, nor very grammatically neither, but very fairly indeed for a lady who has been but one cold season in India, and has had only servants on whom to practise. I daresay that in time she will make herself understood even by zamindars’ bibis [wives]. Only I’m afraid she’ll have—” “What?” inquired Mr. Hartley as his son stopped short. “Headaches,” responded Robin. “Many missionaries have headaches,” observed his father, who was now seldom without one. “Yes; but some can take headaches, and other aches too, as a hunter takes a hedge: it lies in his way; he goes over it or scrambles through it, spurs on, and is in at the death. But not every one is a hunter.”