“Ahrr! you old fool!” cried the lobster, shaking her claw at him.
But the professor pretended to take no notice. “Those low-bred people always call names,” he said to himself. “What an old humbug she is, and what idiots people are to go to her for advice!”
The merman went swimming on his way, but as he swam he passed a garden. It was rather a large garden, shut in by a hedge of sea flag and tangle, with pink and white shells glittering here and there among the leaves. Behind the garden was a very lofty and spacious grotto, where lived a family with whom the professor’s household was very intimate. The merman paused a minute, for some one in the garden was singing. The singer had a voice that would have made people on land go wild to hear her. If you can imagine a wood-thrush multiplied by fifty and singing articulate music, you can have some idea of the mermaid’s voice. But in the sea every one can sing, and they don’t care much more for it than we do here for public speaking. She was singing a silly little song, but it was joined to a sweet air, and the words were of no great consequence:
“My goodman marchèd down the street,
‘Good-bye, my dear, good-bye,’ said he;
‘Good-bye, my dear;’ it might be ne’er
Would he come back again to me.
“‘Good-bye, my love,’ I said aloud;
I kept my smile, I did not cry;
‘Good-bye, my own,’ and he was gone,