“Well,” said Mavis impatiently, “after all, there’s no danger in just trying to _see_ the Mermaid. You promise you won’t do anything if Bernard says not—that’ll do, I suppose? Though why you should be a slave to him just because he chooses to say you’re his particular sister, I don’t see. Will _that_ do, Bear?” “I’ll promise _anything_,” said Kathleen, almost in tears, “if you’ll only let me come with you all and see the Mermaid if she turns out to be seeable.” So that was settled. Now came the question of where the magic words should be said. Mavis and Francis voted for the edge of the rocks where the words had once already been so successfully spoken. Bernard said, “Why not here where we are?” Kathleen said rather sadly that any place would do as long as the Mermaid came when she was called. But Reuben, standing sturdily in his girl’s clothes, said: “Look ’ere. When you’ve run away like what I have, least said soonest mended, and out of sight’s out of mind. What about caves?” “Caves are too dry, except at high tide,” said Francis. “And then they’re too wet. Much.” “Not all caves,” Reuben reminded him. “If we was to turn and go up by the cliff path. There’s a cave up there. I hid in it t’other day. Quite dry, except in one corner, and there it’s as wet as you want—a sort of ’orse trough in the rocks it looks like—only deep.” “Is it seawater?” Mavis asked anxiously. And Reuben said: “Bound to be, so near the sea and all.” But it wasn’t. For when they had climbed the cliff path and Reuben had shown them where to turn aside from it, and had put aside the brambles and furze that quite hid the cave’s mouth, Francis saw at once that the water here could not be seawater. It was too far above the line which the waves reached, even in the stormiest weather. “So it’s no use,” he explained. But the others said, “Oh, do let’s try, now we _are_ here,” and they went on into the dusky twilight of the cave. It was a very pretty cave, not chalk, like the cliffs, but roofed and walled with gray flints such as the houses and churches are built of that you see on the downs near Brighton and Eastbourne. “This isn’t an accidental cave, you know,” said Bernard importantly; “it’s built by the hand of man in distant ages, like Stonehenge and the Cheesewring and Kit’s Coty House.” The cave was lighted from the entrance where the sunshine crept faintly through the brambles. Their eyes soon grew used to the gloom and they could see that the floor of the cave was of dry white sand, and that along one end was a narrow dark pool of water. Ferns fringed its edge and drooped their fronds to its smooth surface—a surface which caught a gleam of light, and shone whitely; but the pool was very still, and they felt somehow, without knowing why, very deep. “It’s no good, no earthly,” said Francis.