bridge, "Freshwater fish, my
dears. I wish you would wait for us! I don't want you to attend
the submarine wedding of our old friends Tame and Isis." To which
Pica rejoined, likewise talking out of Spenser, that Proteus would
provide a nice ancient nymph to tend on them. Her father then
chimed in, saying, "You will spare our nerves by keeping to dry land
unless you can secure the ancient mariner who was with us
yesterday."

"Come, come, most illustrious," said Pica good-humouredly, "I'm not
going to encourage you to set up for nerves. You are much better
without them, and I must get some medusae."

It ended with, "I beg you will not go without that old man," the
most authoritative speech I have heard either Martyn or Mary make to
their daughters; but it was so much breath wasted on Pica, who
maintains her right to judge for herself. The ancient mariner had
been voted an encumbrance and exchanged for a jolly young waterman.

Our other mother, Edith, implored, and was laughed down by Charley,
who declared she could swim, and that she did not think Uncle Martyn
would have been so old-womanish. Metelill was so tender and
caressing with her frightened mother that I thought here at last was
submission, and with a good grace. But after a turn on the
esplanade among the pupils, back came Metelill in a hurry to say,
"Dear mother, will you very much _MIND_ if I go? They will be so
disappointed, and there will be such a fuss if I don't; and Charley
really ought to have some one with her besides Pie, who will heed
nothing but magnifying medusae." I am afraid it is true, as Isa
says, that it was all owing to the walk with that young Mr Horne.

Poor Edith fell into such a state of nervous anxiety that I could
not leave her, and she confided to me how Charley had caught her
foolish masculine affectations in the family of this very Bertie
Elwood, and told me of the danger of an attachment between Metelill
and a young government clerk who is always on the look-out for her.
"And dear Metelill is so gentle and gracious that she cannot bear to
repel any one," says the mother, who would, I see, be thankful to
part with either daughter to our keeping in hopes of breaking off
perilous habits. I was saved, however, from committing myself by
the coming in of Isabel. That child follows me about like a tame
cat, and seems so to need mothering that I cannot bear to snub her.

She came to propound to me a notion that has risen amo