moving like the branches.
It looked as if the leaves and the roots were playfully interchanging
kisses.

Nothing gave her greater pleasure than to hear about the world of human
beings up above; she made her old grandmother tell her all that she knew
about ships and towns, people and animals. But above all it seemed
strangely beautiful to her that up on the earth the flowers were
scented, for they were not so at the bottom of the sea; also that the
woods were green, and that the fish which were to be seen among the
branches could sing so loudly and sweetly that it was a delight to
listen to them. You see the grandmother called little birds fish, or the
mermaids would not have understood her, as they had never seen a bird.

'When you are fifteen,' said the grandmother, 'you will be allowed to
rise up from the sea and sit on the rocks in the moonlight, and look at
the big ships sailing by, and you will also see woods and towns.'

One of the sisters would be fifteen in the following year, but the
others,--well, they were each one year younger than the other, so that
the youngest had five whole years to wait before she would be allowed to
come up from the bottom, to see what things were like on earth. But each
one promised the others to give a full account of all that she had seen,
and found most wonderful on the first day. Their grandmother could never
tell them enough, for there were so many things about which they wanted
information.

None of them was so full of longings as the youngest, the very one who
had the longest time to wait, and who was so quiet and dreamy. Many a
night she stood by the open windows and looked up through the dark blue
water which the fish were lashing with their tails and fins. She could
see the moon and the stars, it is true; their light was pale, but they
looked much bigger through the water than they do to our eyes. When she
saw a dark shadow glide between her and them, she knew that it was
either a whale swimming above her, or else a ship laden with human
beings. I am certain they never dreamt that a lovely little mermaid was
standing down below, stretching up her white hands towards the keel.

The eldest princess had now reached her fifteenth birthday, and was to
venture above the water. When she came back she had hundreds of things
to tell them, but the most delightful of all, she said, was to lie in
the moonlight, on a sandbank in a calm sea, and to gaze at the large
town close to the