This was the beginning of ever so many surprises. First, Father and I had warm new overcoats, with woolly stuff inside them that felt like blankets, only much more soft and fluffy, and Nancy had the blue silk dress she always vowed that she should buy when her ship came home. There was a fire every night in Father's study, and I had one in my bedroom. More patients came up for soup than they did for medicine, and they said "God bless you, Sir!" to Father so often that he wanted to run away. The children in the hospital had the biggest tree that the ward would hold, and all the old men and women in the workhouse had a big tea, and shawls and mufflers. A few weeks later a strange young man with a very shiny collar and a new brown bag came to stay with us. Father said he was a "locum," but Nancy said it ought to be "locust," for his appetite was enormous, and she couldn't make enough buttered toast to please him. He had come to take care of Father's patients until someone bought all the medicines and things in the surgery, and I was awfully glad to hear we were going away. "We'll go straight to the sunshine, Chris," said Father, "where there are trees and flowers instead of long rows of houses, and the air isn't full of smoke." And that night I dreamt all about fairies, and of what I was going to see and hear in foreign lands. [Illustration: The "Locust."] [Illustration] Chapter II The Princess with the Sea-Green hair. The cliffs were hidden in the mist when we left Dover, and the sky was dull and grey. But very soon it began to clear; a silvery light shone behind the clouds, and then the sun came out, and the rolling waves turned emerald green. They tossed our steamer up and down as if it were a cork, and Father soon went below, but I begged so hard to be allowed to stay on deck that he said I might if I would promise, "honour bright," not to get into mischief. When he had gone I put my cap into my pocket, so that it might not blow off, and leaned over the rails to watch the swell of the sea. I wasn't thinking of Fairies then, nor of being a Christmas child, but of how it must feel to be shipwrecked. So when the spray blew in my face and made me blink, I was surprised to see a merry red face grinning up at me from the foam. It had curls of seaweed upon its forehead, and a mouth like a big round "O". "I'm Father Neptune," it roared, so loudly that I could hear it quite distinctly above the noise of the wind. "Why not take a header, and come and ride one of my fine sea horses? 'Father wouldn't like it?' Ho! ho! ho! What a molly-coddle of a boy!" A big wave tossed him on one side, and on its crest was a beautiful girl with a shining tail, and hair like a stream of gold. Of course I knew she was a mermaid, and would want me to go to her coral caves. "Won't you come with me and play with my sheeny pearls?" she cried. "They gleam like the dawn on a summer morning, and you shall choose the loveliest for your very own."