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The Captive "Then the magic's really begun—"

"Mermaids aren't magic," he said, "anymore than flying fishes or giraffes are."

"But she came when you said ‘Sabrina fair,'" said Mavis.

"Sabrina wasn't a Mermaid," said Francis firmly. "It's no use trying to join things on when they won't. Come on, we may as well be getting home." "Mightn't she be?" suggested Mavis. "A Mermaid, I mean. Like salmon that live in rivers and go down to the sea."

"I say, I never thought of that. How simply ripping if it turned out to be really Sabrina—wouldn't it be? But which do you suppose could be her—the one who spoke to us or the one she's afraid will die in captivity—the one she wants us to save."

They had reached the shore by now and Mavis looked up from turning her brown stockings right way out to say:

"I suppose we didn't really both fancy it. Could we have? Isn't there some sort of scientific magic that makes people think the same things as each other when it's not true at all, like with Indian mango tricks? Uncle Fred said so, you know, they call it ‘Tell-ee-something.'"

"I'll tell you something," said Francis, urgent with shoelace, "if we keep on saying things weren't when we know perfectly well they were, we shall soon dish up any sort of chance of magic we may ever have had. When do you find people in books going on like that? They just say ‘This is magic!' and behave as if it was. They don't go pretending they're not sure. Why, no magic would stand it."

"Aunt Dorothea once told me that all magic was like Prince Rupert's drop," Mavis owned: "if once you broke it there was nothing left but a little dust." "That's just what I'm saying, isn't it? We've always felt there was magic right enough, haven't we? Well, now we've come across 27