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_Wet Magic_

[Illustration]




[Illustration: _The sea came pouring in._]




    _Wet Magic_

    E. NESBIT
    WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY H. R. MILLAR




    _Copyright © 1913 by E Nesbit_
    _Illustrations copyright © 1913 by H. R. Millar_




    _To
    Dr. E. N. da C. Andrade_,

    FROM
    E. NESBIT

    [Illustration]

    WELL HALL,
    KENT




_Contents_


    CHAPTER I
    SABRINA FAIR                1

    CHAPTER II
    THE CAPTIVE                13

    CHAPTER III
    THE RESCUE                 30

    CHAPTER IV
    GRATITUDE                  51

    CHAPTER V
    CONSEQUENCES               61

    CHAPTER VI
    THE MERMAID’S HOME         69

    CHAPTER VII
    THE SKIES ARE FALLING      84

    CHAPTER VIII
    THE WATER-WAR             101

    CHAPTER IX
    THE BOOK PEOPLE           116

    CHAPTER X
    THE UNDER FOLK            135

    CHAPTER XI
    THE PEACEMAKER            154


    CHAPTER XII
    THE END                   167




_Illustrations_


    _The sea came pouring in._      _Frontispiece_

    “_We die in captivity._”                  _26_

    “_‘Translucent wave,’ indeed!_”           _42_

    “_The police._”                           _54_

    _And disappeared entirely._               _59_

    _She caught Kathleen in her arms._        _79_

    _The golden door._                        _82_

    _The Swordfish Brigade._                 _103_

    _The First Dipsys._                      _110_

    _Book Hatefuls._                         _122_

    _Book Heroines._                         _130_

    _In the net._                            _137_

    _The Hall of Public Archives._           _149_

    _The chargers of the Horse Marines._     _152_




CHAPTER ONE

_Sabrina Fair_


THAT GOING TO THE SEASIDE was the very beginning of everything—only it
seemed as though it were going to be a beginning without an end, like
the roads on the Sussex downs which look like roads and then look like
paths, and then turn into sheep tracks, and then are just grass and
furze bushes and tottergrass and harebells and rabbits and chalk.

The children had been counting the days to The Day. Bernard indeed had
made a calendar on a piece of cardboard that had once been the bottom
of the box in which his new white sandshoes came home. He marked the
divisions of the weeks quite neatly in red ink, and the days were
numbered in blue ink, and every day he crossed off one of those numbers
with a piece of green chalk he happened to have left out of a penny
box. Mavis had washed and ironed all the dolls’ clothes at least a
fortnight before The Day. This was thoughtful and farsighted of her, of
course, but it was a little trying to Kathleen, who was much younger
and who would have preferred to go on playing with her dolls in their
dirtier and more familiar state.

“Well, if you do,” said Mavis, a little hot and cross from the ironing
board, “I’ll never wash anything for you again, not even your face.”

Kathleen somehow felt as if she could bear that.

“But mayn’t I have just one of the dolls” was, however, all she said,
“just the teeniest, weeniest one? Let me have Lord Edward. His head’s
half gone as it is, and I could dress him in a clean hanky and pretend
it was kilts.”

Mavis could not object to this, because, of course, whatever else she
washed she didn’t wash hankies. So Lord Edward had his pale kilts, and
the other dolls were put away in a row in Mavis’s corner drawer. It was
after that that Mavis and Francis had long secret consultations—and
when the younger ones asked questions they were told, “It’s secrets.
You’ll know in good time.” This, of course, excited everyone very
much indeed—and it was rather a comedown when the good time came, and
the secret proved to be nothing more interesting than a large empty
aquarium which the two elders had clubbed their money together to buy,
for eight-and ninepence in the Old Kent Road. They staggered up the
front garden path with it, very hot and tired.

“But what are you going to do with it?” Kathleen asked, as they all
stood around the nursery table looking at it.

“Fill it with seawater,” Francis explained, “to put sea anemones in.”

“Oh yes,” said Kathleen with enthusiasm, “and the crabs and starfish
and prawns and the yellow periwinkles—and all the common objects of the
seashore.”

“We’ll stand it in the window,” Mavis added: “it’ll make the lodgings
look so distinguished.”

“And then perhaps some great scientific gentleman, like Darwin or
Faraday, will see it as he goes by, and it will be such a joyous
surprise to him to come face-to-face with our jellyfish; he’ll offer
to teach Francis all about science for nothing—I see,” said Kathleen
hopefully.

“But how will you get it to the seaside?” Bernard asked, leaning his
hands on the schoolroom table and breathing heavily into the aquarium,
so that its shining sides became dim and misty. “It’s much too big to
go in the boxes, you know.”

“Then I’ll carry it,” said Francis, “it won’t be in the way at all—I
carried it home today.”

“We had to take the bus, you know,” said truthful Mavis, “and then I
had to help you.”

“I don’t believe they’ll let you take it at all,” said Bernard—if you
know anything of grown-ups you will know that Bernard proved to be
quite right.

“Take an aquarium to the seaside—nonsense!” they said. And “What for?”
not waiting for the answer. “They,” just at present, was