“‘Ho! ho!’ said the Salem witch. ‘Here’s a dainty young maiden indeed!’” [Page 86.]
“If you would be so good,” said the mermaid, taking off her jeweled necklace and zone and holding them out to the witches, “will you tell me where the professor’s grandson is, and whether he cannot be induced to come home?”
“And what’s your interest in him?” said the Witch of the Sea, taking snuff and looking at her sharply.
“I am his sister’s friend,” said the mermaid, steadily; “otherwise it is not a matter of consequence to me whether he spends his life in the chase of a wooden image; but I am very fond of the professor, and I think it a very sad thing that he should be left alone in his old age.”
“Umph!” said the Salem witch. “Just the same, fish-tailed or two-legged, in the sea or out of it. There’s a girl in our town as like her as two peas.”
“Young lady,” said the Witch of the Sea, “I haven’t had any hand in this matter.” (But of course I can’t say this was true. I incline myself to think she had had her finger in the pie.) “I can’t undo the spell—not now. If you want to find your friend’s brother, you must go West toward the coast.”
“Take a bee line,” said the Salem witch.
“I don’t know what that is,” said the mermaid, who didn’t know what a bee was.
“As the crow flies,” said the Salem witch.