So once again—
“‘Sabrina fair,
Listen where thou art sitting,
Under the glassie, cool, translucent wave,’”
He got no further. There was a heaving and stirring of the seaweed and fish tail, something gleamed white, through the brown something white parted the seaweed, two white hands parted it, and a face came to the surface of the rather dirty water and—there was no doubt about it—spoke.
“‘Translucent wave,’indeed!” was what the face said. “I wonder you’re not ashamed to speak the invocation over a miserable cistern like this. What do you want?”
Brown hair and seaweed still veiled most of the face, but all the children, who, after their first start back had pressed close to the tank again, could see that the face looked exceedingly cross.
“We want,” said Francis in a voice that would tremble though he told himself again and again that he was not a baby and wasn’t going to behave like one—“we want to help you.”
“Help me? You?” She raised herself a little more in the tank and looked contemptuously at them. “Why, don’t you know that I am mistress of all water magic? I can raise a storm that will sweep away this horrible place and my detestable captors and you with them, and carry me on the back of a great wave down to the depths of the sea.”
“Then why on earth don’t you?” Bernard asked.