-come now!--and tell me all about it.'
After a bit she lifted her face, very pitiful, and says she in a small
voice, 'I was afeard you had been drinkin', sir.' 'A little--a very
little,' answers my father; 'we'll say no more about it.' 'And I was
afeard,' says she, 'you would want to carry me home and marry me
against my will!' 'Lord,' says my father, 'trust a woman for putting
notions into a man's head. No, no, my dear; I can get all the
temperance talk I want without committin' bigamy for it.' 'An' you
couldn' marry me,' says the merrymaid, with a kind o' sob, 'because I'm
married already, an' the mother of two as pretty children as ever you
wished to see. I can hear 'em callin' for me,' she said, 'down there,
beyond the bar,' and she went on to tell him (but the tale was all
mixed up with sobbin') how she and the children had been swimmin' along
shore that afternoon, and liftin' their heads above water to glimpse
the sea-pinks and catch a smell of the thyme on the cliffs; and how she
had left 'em to play while she swam into the cave to sit for a while
and comb out her pretty hair. But the tide had run back while she was
busy, and she couldn't crawl back to the sea over the bar, because on
dry sand all her strength left her. 'And if I wait for the flood,' she
said, 'my husband'll half murder me; for he's jealous as fire.'

"My father listened, and, sure enough, he seemed to hear the children's
voices callin' to her out beyond the water's edge. With that, bein'
always a tender-hearted man, he knelt down and lifted her out o' the
pool. Now, if he'd had more sense at the time he'd have struck a
bargain with her; for the merrymaids, they say, can tell where gold is
hidden, and charm a man against sickness, and make all his wishes come
true. But in the tenderness of his heart he thought 'pon none o' these
things. He just let her put her arms round his neck, and lifted her
over the sands, and waded out with her, till he stood three feet deep
in water in his sea-boots; and then she gave him a kiss and slid away
with a flip of her tail. 'Twas only when he stood staring that it
crossed his mind what a fool he had been and what a chance he had
missed. Then he remembered that she had dropped her comb by the edge of
the pool--he had heard it fall when he lifted her, and back he went to
search for it: for the sayin' is that with a merrymaid's comb you can
comb out your hair in handfuls of guineas. But all he found was a
broken bit