"Drag us under?" repeated the Merboy. "Why, my dear boy, we are under. We've been driving under water for ten minutes now. In ten more we shall be on the ocean's bottom."
Jimmieboy pressed his lips as tightly together as he possibly could. If, as the Merboy had said, he was under water and headed directly for the bottom of the sea, he was not going to run any risks by opening his mouth and getting it full of sea-water, which he knew from experience was not the pleasantest-tasting stuff in the world. He was a cautious boy too, Jimmieboy was, and he had a distinct recollection of having heard his father warn a friend of his at the sea-shore one summer's day not to open his mouth too widely when he was in bathing, for fear he might take in the ocean at a gulp, which would be a dreadful thing to do.
"Don't make such fearful faces," said the Merboy, noticing Jimmieboy's efforts to squeeze his two lips into one. "You'll frighten the whales."
"Mwime mfwaid mgetting mwater in m' mouf," mumbled Jimmieboy.
"Excuse me," said the Merboy, looking at him as if he thought he was crazy. "I never studied that language, and I don't know what you are trying to say; open your mouth and speak English."
"Mwime mfwaid," mumbled Jimmieboy again, meaning to say "I'm afraid."
"Whoa!" cried the Merboy, reining in his Dolphins. "Now look here, Jamesboy," he added, severely, as the carriage came to a stop, "I won't take you any further if you don't stop that. My relatives down here have been very anxious to meet you, because I've written to them several times telling them all about you; but I can tell you just one thing. If you are going to make faces like that, and talk with your lips tight closed and your voice way down in your boots, not to mention the horrible language you are using, they won't have anything to do with you, and they'll think I got you out of a circus instead of at your home. What's come over you all of a sudden, anyhow?"
Poor Jimmieboy didn't know what to do. He had no wish to offend the Merboy or to frighten whales or to prove unpleasant to the Merboy's friends, but he also did not care to get a mouthful of salt water.
Fortunately at this moment a Porpoise, who was on duty as a policeman in that neighborhood came swimming up, attracted, no doubt, by the somewhat angry tones of the Merboy.
"What's the matter here?" he said, frowning with his left eyebrow and using his right eye to look pleasant, for if everything was all right he wanted to look pleasant, while the frown was for use in case there was danger of a disturbance.