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Consequences it with a sob. And at that Mrs. Pearce turned very quickly.

"What to gracious!" she said—"whatever to gracious is the matter? Where've you been?" She took Mavis by the shoulder. "Why, you're all sopping wet. You naughty, naughty little gell, you. Wait till I tell your Ma—been shrimping I lay—or trying to—never asking when the tide was right. And not a shrimp to show for it, I know, with the tide where it is. You wait till we hear what your Ma's got to say about it. And look at my clean flags and you dripping all over 'em like a fortnight's wash in wet weather."

Mavis twisted a little in Mrs. Pearce's grasp. "Oh, don't scold us, dear Mrs. Pearce," she said, putting a wet arm up toward Mrs. Pearce's neck. "We are so miserable."

"And so you deserve to be," said Mrs. Pearce, smartly. "Here, young chap, you go into the washhouse and get them things off, and drop them outside the door, and have a good rub with the jack-towel; and little miss can undress by the fire and put hern in this clean pail—and I'll pop up softlike and so as your Ma don't hear, and bring you down something dry."

A gleam of hope fell across the children's hearts—a gleam wild and watery as that which the moonlight had cast across the sea, into which the Mermaid had disappeared. Perhaps after all Mrs. Pearce wasn't going to tell Mother. If she was, why should she pop up softlike? Perhaps she would keep their secret. Perhaps she would dry their clothes. Perhaps, after all, that impossible explanation would never have to be given.

The kitchen was a pleasant place, with bright brasses and shining crockery, and a round three-legged table with a clean cloth and blue-and-white teacups on it.

Mrs. Pearce came down with their nightgowns and the warm dressing gowns that Aunt Enid had put in in spite of their expressed wishes. How glad they were of them now!

"There, that's a bit more like," said Mrs. Pearce; "here, don't 63