It may have been a gravel-sifter. But there were a great many fallals and odds and ends which were not in the least like the sifter which they use for riddling sand. There were little manichords which resembled toes in white woollen stockings, and when they moved it was just as if a foot with two hundred skeleton toes were walking; and it walked and walked and yet never left the spot.
It was a strange thing. But the game was up, for the skeleton no longer touched the strings; it played on the water as if it were knocking at a door with its fingers, asking whether it might come in.
The game was up. A school of sticklebacks came and swam right through the box, and when they trailed their spikes over the strings, the strings sounded again; but they played in a new way, for now they were tuned to another pitch.
***
On a rosy summer evening soon afterwards two children, a boy and a girl, were sitting on the landing-bridge. They were not thinking of anything in particular, unless it was a tiny piece of mischief, when all at once they heard soft music from the bottom of the sea, which startled them.
“Do you hear it?”
“Yes, what is it? It sounds like scales.”
“No, it’s the song of the gnats.”
“No, it’s a mermaid!”
“There are no mermaids. The schoolmaster said so.”