Wet Magic - E. Nesbit (read novels website TXT) 📗

us in the silk attire and jewels have to spare.”

They pushed the blue serge skirt and jersey through the branches, which he held apart.

“Now the ’at,” he said, reaching a hand for it. But the hat was too large for the opening in the bush, and he had to come out of it. The moment he was out the girls crowned him with the big rush-hat, around whose crown a blue scarf was twisted, and Francis and Bernard each seizing a leg, adorned those legs with brown stockings and white sandshoes. Reuben, the spangled runaway from the gypsy camp, stood up among his new friends a rather awkward and quite presentable little girl.

“Now,” he said, looking down at his serge skirts with a queer smile, “now we shan’t be long.”

Nor were they. Thrusting the tin spoon and the pie plate and the discarded boots of Reuben into the kind shelter of the bush they made straight for the sea.

When they got to that pleasant part of the shore which is smooth sand and piled shingle, lying between low rocks and high cliffs, Bernard stopped short.

“Now, look here,” he said, “if Sabrina fair turns up trumps I don’t mind going on with the adventure, but I won’t do it if Kathleen’s to be in it.”

“It’s not fair,” said Kathleen; “you said I might.”

“Did I?” Bernard most handsomely referred the matter to the others.

“Yes, you did,” said Francis shortly. Mavis said “Yes,” and Reuben clinched the matter by saying, “Why, you up and asked her yourself if she’d go along of you.”

“All right,” said Bernard calmly. “Then I shan’t go myself. That’s all.”

“Oh, bother,” said at least three of the five; and Kathleen said: “I don’t see why I should always be out of everything.”

“Well,” said Mavis impatiently, “after all, there’s no danger in just trying to see the Mermaid. You promise you won’t do anything if Bernard says not⁠—that’ll do, I suppose? Though why you should be a slave to him just because he chooses to say you’re his particular sister, I don’t see. Will that do, Bear?”

“I’ll promise anything,” said Kathleen, almost in tears, “if you’ll only let me come with you all and see the Mermaid if she turns out to be seeable.”

So that was settled.

Now came the question of where the magic words should be said.

Mavis and Francis voted for the edge of the rocks where the words had once already been so successfully spoken. Bernard said, “Why not here where we are?” Kathleen said rather sadly that any place would do as long as the Mermaid came when she was called. But Reuben, standing sturdily in his girl’s clothes, said:

“Look ’ere. When you’ve run away like what I have, least said soonest mended, and out of sight’s out of mind. What about caves?”

“Caves are too dry, except at high tide,” said Francis. “And then they’re too wet. Much.”

“Not all caves,” Reuben reminded him. “If we was to turn and go up by the cliff path. There’s a cave up there. I hid in it t’other day. Quite dry, except in one corner, and there it’s as wet as you want⁠—a sort of ’orse trough in the rocks it looks like⁠—only deep.”

“Is it seawater?” Mavis asked anxiously. And Reuben said:

“Bound to be, so near the sea and all.”

But it wasn’t. For when they had climbed the cliff path and Reuben had shown them where to turn aside from it, and had put aside the brambles and furze that quite hid the cave’s mouth, Francis saw at once that the water here could not be seawater. It was too far above the line which the waves reached, even in the stormiest weather.

“So it’s no use,” he explained.

But the others said, “Oh, do let’s try, now we are here,” and they went on into the dusky twilight of the cave.

It was a very pretty cave, not chalk, like the cliffs, but roofed and walled with gray flints such as the houses and churches are built of that you see on the downs near Brighton and Eastbourne.

“This isn’t an accidental cave, you know,” said Bernard importantly; “it’s built by the hand of man in distant ages, like Stonehenge and the Cheesewring and Kit’s Coty House.”

The cave was lighted from the entrance where the sunshine crept faintly through the brambles. Their eyes soon grew used to the gloom and they could see that the floor of the cave was of dry white sand, and that along one end was a narrow dark pool of water. Ferns fringed its edge and drooped their fronds to its smooth surface⁠—a surface which caught a gleam of light, and shone whitely; but the pool was very still, and they felt somehow, without knowing why, very deep.

“It’s no good, no earthly,” said Francis.

“But it’s an awfully pretty cave,” said Mavis consolingly. “Thank you for showing it to us, Reuben. And it’s jolly cool. Do let’s rest a minute or two. I’m simply boiling, climbing that cliff path. We’ll go down to the sea in a minute. Reuben could wait here if he felt safer.”

“All right, squattez-vous,” said Bernard, and the children sat down at the water’s edge, Reuben still very awkward in his girl’s clothes.

It was very, very quiet. Only now and then one fat drop of water would fall from the cave’s roof into that quiet pool and just move its surface in a spreading circle.

“It’s a ripping place for a hidey-hole,” said Bernard, “better than that old bush of yours, anyhow. I don’t believe anybody knows of the way in.”

“I don’t think anyone does, either,” said Reuben, “because there wasn’t any way in till it fell in two days ago, when I was trying to dig up a furze root.”

“I should hide here if you want to hide,” said Bernard.

“I mean to,” said Reuben.

“Well, if you’re rested, let’s get on,” Francis said; but Kathleen urged:

“Do let’s say ‘Sabrina fair,’ first⁠—just to try!” So they said it⁠—all but the Spangled Child who did not know it⁠—