"Which house?" Mrs. Bunting came nearer. "_Your_ house," said the Sea Lady, and shut her eyes for good and became oblivious to all further remarks. "She-- But I don't understand--" said Mrs. Bunting, addressing everybody.... And then it was they saw it. Nettie, the younger Miss Bunting, saw it first. She pointed, she says, before she could find words to speak. Then they all saw it! Miss Glendower, I believe, was the person who was last to see it. At any rate it would have been like her if she had been. "Mother," said Nettie, giving words to the general horror. "_Mother!_ She has a _tail_!" And then the three maids and Mabel Glendower screamed one after the other. "Look!" they cried. "A tail!" "Of all--" said Mrs. Bunting, and words failed her. "_Oh!_" said Miss Glendower, and put her hand to her heart. And then one of the maids gave it a name. "It's a mermaid!" screamed the maid, and then everyone screamed, "It's a mermaid." Except the mermaid herself; she remained quite passive, pretending to be insensible partly on Fred's shoulder and altogether in his arms. II That, you know, is the tableau so far as I have been able to piece it together again. You must imagine this little knot of people upon the beach, and Mr. Bunting, I figure, a little apart, just wading out of the water and very wet and incredulous and half drowned. And the neighbour's ladder was drifting quietly out to sea. Of course it was one of those positions that have an air of being conspicuous. Indeed it was conspicuous. It was some way below high water and the group stood out perhaps thirty yards down the beach. Nobody, as Mrs. Bunting told my cousin Melville, knew a bit _what_ to do and they all had even an exaggerated share of the national hatred of being seen in a puzzle. The mermaid seemed content to remain a beautiful problem clinging to Fred, and by all accounts she was a reasonable burthen for a man. It seems that the very large family of people who were stopping at the house called Koot Hoomi had appeared in force, and they were all staring and gesticulating. They were just the sort of people the Buntings did not want to know--tradespeople very probably. Presently one of the men--the particularly vulgar man who used to shoot at the gulls--began putting down their ladder as if he intended to offer advice, and Mrs. Bunting also became aware of the black glare of the field glasses of a still more horrid man to the west. Moreover the popular author who lived next door, an irascible dark square-headed little man in spectacles, suddenly turned up and began bawling from his inaccessible wall top something foolish about his ladder. Nobody thought of his silly ladder or took any trouble about it, naturally. He was quite stupidly excited. To judge by his tone and gestures he was using dreadful language and seemed disposed every moment to jump down to the beach and come to them. And then to crown the situation, over the westward groin appeared Low Excursionists!