[CHAPTER THREE]
The Rescue
THE great question, of course, was—Would Mother take them to the circus, or would she, if she wouldn’t herself take them, let them go alone? She had once, in Buckinghamshire, allowed them to go to a traveling menagerie, after exacting from them a promise that they were not to touch any of the animals, and they had seen reason to regret their promise when the showman offered to let them stroke his tame performing wolf, who was so very like a collie. When they had said, “No, thank you,” the showman had said, “Oh, frightened, are you? Run along home to Mammy then!” and the bystanders had laughed in a most insulting way. At a circus, of course, the horses and things aren’t near enough for you to stroke them, so this time they might not be asked to promise. If Mother came with them her presence, though agreeable, would certainly add to the difficulties, already quite enough—as even Mavis could not but see—of rescuing the Mermaid. But suppose Mother didn’t come with them.
“Suppose we have to promise we won’t touch any of the animals?” suggested Cathay. “You can’t rescue a person without touching it.”
“That’s just it,” said Mavis, “a Mermaid isn’t an animal. She’s a person.”
“But suppose it isn’t that sort of Mermaid,” said Bernard. “Suppose it’s the sort that other people call seals, like it said in the paper.”
“Well, it isn’t,” said Francis briefly, adding, “so there!”
They were talking in the front garden, leaning over the green gate while Mother upstairs unpacked the luggage that had been the mound with spades on top only yesterday, at Waterloo.
“Mavis!” Mother called through the open window. “I can only find—but you’d better come up.”