By-and-by he came up once more, and, receiving article after article, critically examined it for specks of dirt, then dived with it and appeared again to grasp another, and so on until all the furniture was down below. After this the creature came to the surface, tore off the old woollen garment and the disreputable-looking towel, rolled them together, and threw them disdainfully at the showman. Then it yawned in a tired way, stretched itself as if much fatigued, and dived below. 'Now,' said Biffins Lee, 'the great spring cleaning is all over, and next week I hope to have the extreme felicity of introducing to your notice the merman's only daughter, the beautiful mermaid herself.' But Biffins Lee was too confident. He was at the height of his glory at present with his Queerest Show on Earth, and he little knew what was in store for him. CHAPTER XXIII. 'WELL, CHOPS, TO RUN AWAY.' Frank Antony Blake had gone! He had been summoned away suddenly--it is ever thus that sorrows come--to visit the sickbed of his mother. And this was the first dark cloud that had arisen on the horizon of Lotty's young life. It was sweet for her to know next evening by telegram that her hero's dear mother was better, and that a letter would follow. But--ah!--Antony had gone, and somehow everything was so changed now all about and around her. It was springtime. Spring, indeed, was in its first fresh glory. The sea she loved, the sea out yonder stretching away and away to the illimitable north, may have lost none of its beauty--the blue of its waves when the sun had climbed the mountains, its opal and silver-gray on that cloud-streaked noon, its emerald streaks where sky's blue mixed with the yellow of half-hidden sandbanks, the pearl where the billows broke lazily over the brown-black of weed-capped rocks, its ineffable glory of sunset or moonlight clear gleaming. No, the sea must be the same, and yet it awakened less response, less sympathy, in the heart of the little gipsy lass. Towards the forest, where she went wandering away alone with Wallace, because she wanted to think, things seemed strangely altered somehow. Was the moss that carpeted the beech-woods less soft and bright, or the bark of the birch-trees less snowy? Were the clouds of needled foliage on the brown-stemmed pines more black and solemn, and had the tasselled larches with buds of crimson lost already their spring-green tints? And where was the glory of the golden furze? Where the music of the rose-linnet? Ah! surely the fluting melody of the blackbird and the wild, ringing song of mavis, ay, and the bold lilt of the chaffinch, were less loud and stirring. Yes, and the _cur-r-r_ and _croodle_ of wood-pigeon in the planting's green shade, that used to thrill the heart, sounded farther away now and grown more sad and mournful.