104 Make-Beleve

shore, dragging the box with us, and there
we left it high up on the sands, giving the
baby a pretty coral to play with. I wonder
how we guessed that babies liked to play
with corals? We watched, and presently
a woman came down and walked along the
tide-mark searching for something. When
she found the baby she took it in her arms
and was glad, so that we knew she was its
mother. But presently she looked out to
sea and cried, and then we knew that the
baby’s father was the captain of a ship
which had gone down in the storm. So
we went back to our own place, for we felt
ashamed.”

“And how did you stop being a mer-
maid ?” asked the Visitor.

“I don’t quite remember,” Doris con-
fessed. ‘Sometimes I seem to recollect
that I went to sleep and got caught in the
nets of the fishermen, and that they took
me away and made mea prisoner. There
was a picture of it in London. But I am
not quite sure. I only know that some-