“Oh,” said the bridesmaid, looking straight in the eye which happened to be that side of the whale’s head, “I’m a friend of the family, you know. I’m very much attached to the girls and very fond of the professor. I should like to help them if I could, and I think the witch is a wise woman, and it wouldn’t do at all for the professor to go to her in his position, but it won’t make any difference to me and you. Will you come now? It isn’t far.” “Of course I will,” said the whale. “Just sit on my head, and I’ll take you there in no time.” Just then the bride’s sister came out into the garden. “Are you going, dear?” she said to the bridesmaid. “Yes, I think I shall. Mr. Dick will see me home,” said the other mermaid. “It’s been rather forlorn,” sighed the bride’s sister. “To think of his loving a wooden thing!” “I suppose he had a right to if he chose,” said the mermaid a little hastily. “I’m sure it’s nothing to me.” The bride’s sister was not angry at all. She kissed her friend good-night, and when she and Dick had gone sat down and cried a little. “The poor dear!” she said. Meanwhile Moby Dick and the bridesmaid were on their way to the old Witch of the Sea. She lived in a cave in a thick dark grove of seaweed. She was sitting before the door talking with a gossip of hers, one of the Salem witches, whose broomstick would carry her through the water as well as through the air. The broomstick, which was a spirited young one, was standing hitched at the door, impatiently stamping its stick part on the ground and switching the broom part about to keep off the little crabs. “Ho! ho!” said the Salem witch. “Here’s a dainty young maiden indeed! I’m a great mind to stick a few pins in her.” “You better hadn’t,” said Moby Dick, grimly, for he was not at all afraid of witches. “Ask the old lady any questions you like, my dear; nothing shall hurt you.” [Illustration: “‘Ho! ho!’ said the Salem witch. ‘Here’s a dainty young maiden indeed!’” Page 86.] “If you would be so good,” said the mermaid, taking off her jeweled necklace and zone and holding them out to the witches, “will you tell me where the professor’s grandson is, and whether he cannot be induced to come home?” “And what’s your interest in _him_?” said the Witch of the Sea, taking snuff and looking at her sharply. “I am his sister’s friend,” said the mermaid, steadily; “otherwise it is not a matter of consequence to me whether he spends his life in the chase of a wooden image; but I am very fond of the professor, and I think it a very sad thing that he should be left alone in his old age.” “Umph!” said the Salem witch. “Just the same, fish-tailed or two-legged, in the sea or out of it. There’s a girl in our town as like her as two peas.”