"Does that constitute the hundred relatives?"
"Practically. The Wampachers are sending for a Bishop who used to be his schoolmaster----"
"That she's a mermaid? I don't believe he has. The pater went up to tell him. Of course, he was a bit out of breath and embarrassed. And Chatteris cut him down. 'At least let me hear nothing against her,' he said. And the pater took that and came away. Good old pater. Eh?"
"They're taking it in. Mainly they grasp the fact that he's going to jilt Adeline, just as he jilted the American girl. The mermaid side they seem to boggle at. Old people like that don't take to a new idea all at once. The Wampach ones are shocked--but curious. They don't believe for a moment she really is a mermaid, but they want to know all about it. And the one down at the Pavilion simply said, 'Bosh! How can she breathe under water? Tell me that, Mrs. Bunting. She's some sort of person you have picked up, I don't know how, but mermaid she _cannot_ be.' They'd be all tremendously down on the mater, I think, for picking her up, if it wasn't that they can't do without her help to bring Addy round again. Pretty mess all round, eh?"
"Heaven knows! Just as likely they won't."
My cousin meditated on the veranda tiles for a space.
"Look here," said my cousin Melville, "what am I supposed to do? Why have I been asked to come?"
"I don't know. Stir it up a bit, I expect. Everybody do a bit--like the Christmas pudding."
[Illustration: Adjusting the folds of his blanket to a greater dignity.]
"I've been bathing," said Fred. "Nobody asked me to take a hand and I didn't. It won't be a good pudding without me, but there you are! There's only one thing I can see to do----"
"It might be the right thing. What is it?"
"I don't see how that would help matters."
"Oh, it wouldn't help matters," said Fred, adding with an air of conclusiveness, "There it is!" Then adjusting the folds of his blanket to a greater dignity, and replacing his long extinct large pipe between his teeth, he went on his way. The tail of his blanket followed him reluctantly through the door. His bare feet padded across the hall and became inaudible on the carpet of the stairs.
"Fred!" said Melville, going doorward with a sudden afterthought for fuller particulars.