It was a very odd thing that while Goody Cobb had become a witch, renounced her baptism and sold herself to the enemy of mankind, she was yet very proud of the eminent divine, her grandfather.
“I’ll be the death of you! I’ll stick pins in you, and set my imps to pinch you black and blue!” screamed Goody Cobb, with the look of a possessed woman, as she was.
Suddenly, as Lucy dreamed—so suddenly that she seemed to grow out of the air—there stood on the sand between herself and the witch a tall and beautiful woman in shining raiment of green and silver, with golden hair that fell loosely to her ankles. She gazed sternly on the witch; a divine wrath made her blue eyes awful.
“You earth-born creature!” she cried as she caught the green necklace from the old woman’s trembling hand. “This girl is a child of the ocean, and is in my care;” and Lucy dreamed that she felt glad to remember how she had been born on the voyage her mother made with her father to Calcutta. “Stay where you are for ever!” continued the stranger lady, raising her white hand with a gesture of command. “You will wreck no more ships—you, nor your sister witch.” And then as she stood Goody Cobb stiffened into stone and became a black rock.
“You need not be afraid of me, my dear,” said the dream lady to Lucy. “I never hurt any one in my life. I am only an innocent Sea-Nymph, and I am—or I was—the helper of all the sailor-folk, and your father is a bold seaman.”
Lucy dreamed that she was very much surprised, which was curious, for in a dream the more remarkable a thing is, the less it astonishes the dreamer.
“But I thought there never were any nymphs,” she said, perplexed.
The sea-maiden smiled a queer little smile—half sad, half amused.
“Do you know,” she said, “that since men left off believing in them and building temples, the gods all declare that there never were such things as human creatures, and that it was all a delusion of ours? Keep this;” and she dropped the necklace into Lucy’s lap. “It belonged to one who will not care to wear it now. Farewell;” and the goddess bent down and lightly kissed the girl’s forehead, and the next instant Lucy was alone. She woke up, as she thought, and sat still for a moment.
“What a singular dream!” she said to herself. Then she looked round, and saw a black rock standing beside her, “Was that rock there? I don’t remember it, but of course it must have been.” She rose to her feet. Something fell glittering on the sand. She picked it up. It was a long, shining necklace of green stones.