ad finished his story, he said, "I will take
you in my boat to see the Small People deep down in the water.

"Yes, come with me in my boat and you shall see the Wonderland under
the Sea."

As soon as the old fisherman had hoisted the sail, away they went out
to sea over a wide path of moonlight like a silver road leading
straight out to the sky where it dipped down to the water.

All of a sudden Mary Louise noticed something come close up under the
side of the boat, and remain there staring straight at her. She bent
over until she nearly touched the water, when what she had taken for a
fish appeared to be a very odd-looking little man. He was even shorter
than she, very broad about the shoulders, with funny little arms and
feet that were brought together at the heels, with the toes turned
straight out when he stood up, making them look like a fish's tail.
His eyes were big and round, without any eyelids or eyebrows. But his
mouth was the funniest part, and when he opened it, he looked like a
fish trying to talk. He was dressed in silvery white, shaded to blue
and green.

With a sudden nod, he pointed to the road which opened behind him down
through the depths of the water until lost in the distance.

Little Mary Louise could not take her eyes from him, and, forgetting
all about the old fisherman and the boat, she bent over more and more,
so as to look closer at the funny little old man, until, splash! down
she went into the water.

Then came a tremendous ringing in her ears and she felt her breath go
and she knew nothing more until she found herself standing with the
strange little fish man by the side of a splendid carriage made of a
scallop shell, burnished until it shone with pearl and silver, and
drawn by two beautiful gold-fish and two silver-fish harnessed with the
silken threads of the finest sea-mosses, and driven by an old coachman
that looked like a mackerel.

"We are the sea-horses of the deep,
And we race through the waters blue,
Faster than wind and swifter than tide
We gallop the ocean through."

"Jump in," said the little old fish man; and without a question Mary
Louise stepped into the carriage and sat down on the beautiful
pea-green cushions.

Then the little man got in, the mackerel-faced coachman cracked his
whip, the gold and the silver fishes darted ahead, and away they went.

Great trees waved their long branches as the carriage swept past, and
odd-looking shapes came out