“Yes, of course,” she agreed, “but a great deal of it’s quite true, all the same. But you won’t grow fins and gills or anything like that. You needn’t be afraid.”
The children looked at each other, and then all looked at Francis. He spoke.
“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you very much, but we would rather not—much rather.”
“Oh, nonsense,” said the lady kindly. “Look here, it’s as easy as easy. I give you each a lock of my hair,” she cut off the locks with her shell knife as she spoke, long locks they were and soft. “Look here, tie these round your necks—if I’d had a lock of human hair round my neck I should never have suffered from the dryness as I did. And then just jump in. Keep your eyes shut. It’s rather confusing if you don’t; but there’s no danger.”
The children took the locks of hair, but no one regarded them with any confidence at all as lifesaving apparatus. They still hung back.
“You really are silly,” said the sea lady indulgently. “Why did you meddle with magic at all if you weren’t prepared to go through with it? Why, this is one of the simplest forms of magic, and the safest. Whatever would you have done if you had happened to call up a fire spirit and had had to go down Vesuvius with a Salamander round your little necks?”
She laughed merrily at the thought. But her laugh sounded a little angry too.
“Come, don’t be foolish,” she said. “You’ll never have such a chance again. And I feel that this air is full of your horrid human microbes—distrust, suspicion, fear, anger, resentment—horrid little germs. I don’t want to risk catching them. Come.”
“No,” said Francis, and held out to her the lock of her hair; so did Mavis and Bernard. But Kathleen had tied the lock of hair round her neck, and she said:
“I should have liked to, but I promised Bernard I would not do anything unless he said I might.” It was toward Kathleen that the Mermaid turned, holding out a white hand for the lock.