Page:The Sea Lady.djvu/53

 "And then you know," said the Sea Lady very gravely, "one's hair!"

"Of course," said Melville. "Why!—you can never get it dry!"

"That's precisely it," said she.

My cousin Melville had a new light on an old topic. "And that's why—in the old time?"

"Exactly!" she cried, "exactly! Before there were so many Excursionists and sailors and Low People about, one came out, one sat and brushed it in the sun. And then of course it really was possible to do it up. But now"

She made a petulant gesture and looked gravely at Melville, biting her lip the while. My cousin made a sympathetic noise. "The horrid modern spirit," he said—almost automatically.

But though fiction and fashion appear to be so regrettably dominant in the nourishment of the mer-mind, it must not be