“Well, I was thinking about it,” she said, a little awkwardly, “when you interrupted with your spells. Well, you’ve called and I’ve answered—now tell me what I can do for you.”
“We’ve told you,” said Mavis gently enough, though she was frightfully disappointed that the Mermaid after having in the handsomest manner turned out to be a Mermaid, should be such a very short-tempered one. And when they had talked about her all day and paid the threepence each extra to see her close, and put on their best white dresses too. “We’ve told you—we want to help you. Another Sabrina in the sea told us to. She didn’t tell us anything about you being a magic-mistress. She just said ‘they die in captivity.’”
“‘Translucent wave,’ indeed!”
“Well, thank you for coming,” said the Mermaid. “If she really said that it must be one of two things—either the sun is in the House of Liber—which is impossible at this time of the year—or else the rope I was caught with must be made of llama’s hair, and that’s impossible in these latitudes. Do you know anything about the rope they caught me with?”
“No,” said Bernard and Kathleen. But the others said, “It was a lariat.”
“Ah,” said the Mermaid, “my worst fears are confirmed—But who could have expected a lariat on these shores? But that must have been it. Now I know why, though I have been on the point of working the magic of the Great Storm at least five hundred times since my capture, some unseen influence has always held me back.”
“You mean,” said Bernard, “you feel that it wouldn’t work, so you didn’t try.”