“He might have heard you,” said my mother, reproachfully. “You do say it oftener than you think. But what will the career of a baby be who begins swearing before he can even walk straight? It’s horrible—it’s ruined my life!”
“I should be the last to swear before a child,” said my papa.
And then they went wrangling off. Not a jump to the ceiling did I get, not a smile, not a word of affection. Perhaps ingratitude in a parent is as painful a spectacle as a family furnishes. I kept my mouth shut for two months after that fiasco, but it made them mad to hear of the good things I said to nurse when they were not present. I will affirm of nurse that she is a capital listener, and lets me use what language I like, and never questions either my statements or conclusions. But there, when all is said, a really capable nurse is a luxury, whereas parents appear to be a grim necessity, as far as I have yet been able to understand.
“STAR O’ BOSTON”
HE was a very elderly merman, and he had lived in one cave under the Caribbean Sea for seventy submarine years.
“It’s hard,” he said, “cruel hard at my time of life to be turned out after all the rent I’ve paid. If I’d only gone to a Building Society I should have bought the blessed place ten times over by this time.”
He wept a senile tear, which added one drop to the waters of the Caribbean; then he drew his black seaweed covering round him, put out a phosphorescent lamp, and went to sleep. The morrow would see him and his merdaughter turned away for ever from the home of their fathers. And all about a paltry matter of two years’ rent.
“San Francisco” slept peacefully despite the pending eviction. His coverlet of living seaweed rose and fell regularly; once he turned and smiled sadly and uttered the name of his dead merwife. “Alas! my fair ‘Moonflower,’” he said; “it is well-nigh over with us now, for ‘Lord Aberdeen’ refuses me tenancy of the old cavern any longer, owing to my natural and increasing disinclination to pay rent. For how can I pay what I myself lack? His only alternative offer is that he have our little ‘Star o’ Boston’ to wife; and she with a mergirl’s unwisdom loves elsewhere, her affections being wholly fixed on the penniless but personable merboy ‘Theodore H. Jackson.’”
From these dreamy utterances of the venerable merman you will learn certain interesting facts. First, it becomes apparent that the merpeople are faced with like problems and plagued by emotions similar to those within human experience; while secondly, as to the matter of nomenclature, the submarine system differs widely from any other. Every merchild is in fact named after a sunken ship; and as the merfolks are not a numerous race nor yet a prolific, maritime disaster sufficient for the purpose occurs annually, and merbabies receive their names in order. Sometimes the wrecks are in excess of the sea-children, then the names of the ill-fated vessels are preserved until those are born who will bear them.
“Star o’ Boston” sat and watched her father sleeping his last sleep in the old home. Her hair was the colour of the red-brown seaweed torn from the rocks in times of storm; her eyes were aqua-marine and reflected the cool, green, eternal twilight of the deep. She was fair to see even for a mermaid, and mystery shared her face with beauty. She drew her wonderful hair over her bosom, murmured the name of “Theodore H. Jackson,” and sighed. Love and duty struggled in her heart; she swayed her golden tail idly and drew conventional designs on the sand with the delicate coral-red fins at the end of it. Little fishes swam about her and rubbed themselves lovingly against her fair body; an octopus, who served the purposes of a chandelier, stretched down three or four of his arms and stroked her; a hermit-crab sat upon her shoulder, and there was a pathos in his black, beady eyes as they poked out of his head on stalks and looked at his mistress. Thus her pets—the poor dumb creatures of the Caribbean—showed their humble sympathy; but they could not help “Star o’ Boston” to a decision. She thought of “Lord Aberdeen” and shivered. He was a wealthy sea-owner, and lived in a cave of pink coral gloriously illumined by electricity stolen from a cable. He was old and ugly; he had been married three times and divorced twice. He had lost an eye in a fight with a sword-fish, which he was torturing from a mere love of cruelty. He habitually used the vilest language, and his temper was soured by the sea-snails which are the mosquitoes of the ocean, and cannot be kept out of a house. Many a bald-headed merman has been driven mad by them.