"Oh, very well," said Queen Selina pettishly, "I can't think your daughter will ever settle down or be really happy with us—but that is her affair, and—and I will try my best to be a Mother to her."
"It is enough," said the King of the Crystal Lake, "I have your word. Should ye retract now, what follows will be upon your own heads!" And, with these parting words, he merged into a column of water which towered up as before, its spray falling like fine bronze dust against the now purple sky.
"I don't much think I shall ever get on with him," was all Clarence could find to say, as they walked back with wet feet. "But Forelle—well, she really isn't at all bad-looking—in her way."
"Has she got the same coloured hair as her father?" inquired Edna.
"It's green," he confessed, "but a much prettier shade of green—Eau de nil, I should call it."
"And I suppose all the furniture will have to be covered in oilskin?" went on Edna. "One of the delights of having a Nixie for a sister-in-law."
"You needn't talk!" he said angrily. "You came jolly near giving me a bally ogre for a brother-in-law—what?"
"There is just this difference, Clarence," replied his sister, "I was able to break it off—which you are not."
"Well, if I'm not, it's not my fault, so you needn't nag," he said savagely, for the thought that all hope of Daphne was now irretrievably lost had just begun to gall him.
"We shall all have to change our shoes when we get in," was her answer. "And it is lucky if we escape a bad cold in the head. But I dare say," she added sweetly, "that when dear Forelle is one of us we shall soon grow inured to damp."