“What!” said the Merrow, “did you never hear of my father? he’s the king of the waves, to be sure!”
“And yourself, then, is a real king’s daughter?” said Dick, opening his two eyes to take a full and true survey of his wife that was to be.
“Oh, I’m nothing else but a made man with you, and a king your father;—to be sure he has all the money that’s down in the bottom of the sea!”
“Money,” repeated the Merrow, “what’s money?”
“’Tis no bad thing to have when one wants it,” replied Dick; “and may be now the fishes have the understanding to bring up whatever you bid them?”
“Oh! yes,” said the Merrow, “they bring me what I want.”
“To speak the truth, then,” said Dick, “’tis a straw bed I have at home before you, and that, I’m thinking, is no ways fitting for a king’s daughter: so, if ’twould not be displeasing to you, just to mention, a nice feather-bed, with a pair of new blankets—but what am I talking about? may be you have not such things as beds down under the water?”
“By all means,” said she, “Mr. Fitzgerald—plenty of beds at your service. I’ve fourteen oyster-beds of my own, not to mention one just planting for the rearing of young ones.”
“You have?” says Dick, scratching his head and looking a little puzzled. “’Tis a feather-bed I was speaking of—but clearly, yours is the very cut of a decent plan, to have bed and supper so handy to each other, that a person when they’d have the one, need never ask for the other.”
However, bed or no bed, money or no money, Dick Fitzgerald determined to marry the Merrow, and the Merrow had given her consent. Away they went, therefore, across the strand, from Gollerus to Ballinrunnig, where Father Fitzgibbon happened to be that morning.