ide.

Now the fifth sister's turn came. Her birthday fell in the winter, so
that she saw sights that the others had not seen on their first trips.
The sea looked quite green, and large icebergs were floating about, each
one of which looked like a pearl, she said, but was much bigger than the
church towers built by men. They took the most wonderful shapes, and
sparkled like diamonds. She had seated herself on one of the largest,
and all the passing ships sheered off in alarm when they saw her sitting
there with her long hair streaming loose in the wind.

In the evening the sky became overcast with dark clouds; it thundered
and lightened, and the huge icebergs glittering in the bright lightning,
were lifted high into the air by the black waves. All the ships
shortened sail, and there was fear and trembling on every side, but she
sat quietly on her floating iceberg watching the blue lightning flash in
zigzags down on to the shining sea.

The first time any of the sisters rose above the water she was delighted
by the novelties and beauties she saw; but once grown up, and at liberty
to go where she liked, she became indifferent and longed for her home;
in the course of a month or so they all said that after all their own
home in the deep was best, it was so cosy there.

Many an evening the five sisters interlacing their arms would rise above
the water together. They had lovely voices, much clearer than any
mortal, and when a storm was rising, and they expected ships to be
wrecked, they would sing in the most seductive strains of the wonders of
the deep, bidding the seafarers have no fear of them. But the sailors
could not understand the words, they thought it was the voice of the
storm; nor could it be theirs to see this Elysium of the deep, for when
the ship sank they were drowned, and only reached the Merman's palace in
death. When the elder sisters rose up in this manner, arm-in-arm, in the
evening, the youngest remained behind quite alone, looking after them as
if she must weep; but mermaids have no tears, and so they suffer all the
more.

'Oh! if I were only fifteen!' she said, 'I know how fond I shall be of
the world above, and of the mortals who dwell there.'

At last her fifteenth birthday came.

'Now we shall have you off our hands,' said her grandmother, the old
queen-dowager. 'Come now, let me adorn you like your other sisters!' and
she put a wreath of white lilies round her hair, but every petal of the
fl