Wet Magic quotes

So, of course, they had to. Also Mother had said, “Don’t argue,” so they had not even the melancholy satisfaction of telling Aunt Enid that she was quite wrong, and that they were not messing about at all.

Aunt Enid was not a real aunt, but just an old friend of Grandmamma’s, with an aunt’s name and privileges and rather more than an aunt’s authority.

She was much older than a real aunt and not half so nice. She was what is called “firm” with children, and no one ever called her auntie. Just Aunt Enid. That will tell you in a moment.

“Well, like what?” asked three aggravated voices.

“Like Sabrina⁠—only very, very tiny.”

“A sort of doll—Sabrina,” said Kathleen, “how awfully jolly!”

“She hasn’t a tail, you know,” Kathleen reminded him.

“It isn’t the tail that makes the Mermaid,” Francis reminded her. “It’s being able to live underwater. If it was the tail, then mackerels would be Mermaids.”

“And, of course, they’re not. I see,” said Kathleen.

So off they went, down the white road where the yellowhammer was talking about himself as usual on the tree just beyond wherever you happened to be walking. And so to the beach.

Now, it is very difficult to care much about a Mermaid you have never seen or heard or touched. On the other hand, when once you have seen one and touched one and heard one speak, you seem to care for very little else.

This was why when they got to the shore Kathleen and Bernard began at once to dig the moat of a sandcastle, while the elder ones walked up and down, dragging the new spades after them like some new kind of tail, and talking, talking, …

“It’s like I told you about radium and things,” said Bernard.

“Things aren’t magic because they haven’t been found out yet. There’s always been Mermaids, of course, only people didn’t know it.”

“But she talks,” said Francis.

“I dunno,” said the Spangled Boy.

“I’m running from, not to.”

“Of course you could,” said the Princess. “In fact, you must be brave to begin with, or the coat couldn’t work. It would be no good to a coward.

It just keeps your natural valor warm and your wits cool.

”

“The very thing,” said the Princess joyously; “for you possess the only weapon that can be used against these people or against the authors who created them.

If you can truthfully say to them, ‘I never heard of you,’ your words become a deadly sword that strikes at their most sensitive spot.

”

“Yes—but how did you begin being enemies?”

“Oh, that,” said the Princess, “is lost in the mists of antiquity, before the dawn of history and all that.”

But when Ulfin came with the next meal—did I tell you that the Jailer’s son’s name was Ulfin?—Mavis asked him the same question.

“But the people of your land will punish you for bringing us here, if they find out that he is my Father and that you have brought us together. They will kill you. Why did you do it, Ulfin?”

“Because you wished it, Princess,” he said, “and because I would rather die for you than live without you.”

“Then please concentrate your powerful mind on being a Professor. Think of nothing else. More depends on this than you can easily believe.”

“Believing is easy,” said the Professor.

“Tomorrow at two, I think you said?” and with a grave salutation he turned his back on the company and walked away through his garden.

The Princess laughed and laid her hand on the glassy dome, and lo! it broke and disappeared as a bubble does when you touch it.

“Not magic,” said the Princess. “Your cases are only bubbles.”

“And I never knew,” said Ulfin.

“And I never knew,” said Ulfin.

“No,” said the Princess, “because you never dared to touch them.”

The children were already busy pulling the coats off the ruby slab where they lay. “Here’s Cathay’s,” whispered Mavis.

“Bite through the strings of them with your little sharp teeth,” said the King, “nothing but Princess teeth is sharp enough to cut through them. No, my son—it is not degrading.

A true Princess cannot be degraded by anything that is for the good of her subjects and her friends.

”

“But if you remember that we had a child it cannot be true—if we drank of the oblivion-cup, that is, because, of course, that would make us forget everything.”

“It could not make a mother forget her child,” said the Queen, and with the word caught up Fido-which-was-Cathay and kissed her.

“Nice Queen,” purred Cathay-which-was-Fido, “I do love you.”