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Wet Magic now, in the bright warm sunshine, seemed almost worthwhile to have gone through last night's adventures, if only for the pleasure of telling the tale of them to the two who had been safe and warm and dry in bed all the time.

"Though really," said Mavis, when the tale was told, "sitting here and seeing the tents and the children digging, and the ladies knitting, and the gentlemen smoking and throwing stones, it does hardly seem as though there could be any magic. And yet, you know, there was."

"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.

"Why not?" said Bernard placidly. "Even parrots do that."

"But she talks English," Mavis urged.

"Well," said Bernard, unmoved, "what would you have had her talk?"

And so, in pretty sunshine, between blue sky and good sands, the adventure of the Mermaid seemed to come to an end, to be now only as a tale that is told. And when the four went slowly home to dinner all were, I think, a little sad that this should be so.

"Let's go around and have a look at the empty barrow," Mavis said; "it'll bring it all back to us, and remind us of what was in it, like ladies' gloves and troubadours."

The barrow was where they had left it, but it was not empty.

A very dirty piece of folded paper lay in it, addressed in penciled and uncertain characters

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