"So it is, my dear," said the whale, and looking with admiration at the bridesmaid, who wore white lace and emeralds.
"You came from Gibraltar, didn't you?" said the mermaid, playing with her looking-glass, which the sea ladies carry as ours do their fans.
"Yes, where the bridegroom and I went to see after that bewitched brother-in-law of his," said the whale, for he was vexed at the merman.
"Do you think he is bewitched?" said the bridesmaid.
The whale scratched his head, which is not vulgar in a whale.
"I never thought of it before," he said; "but now you speak of it I shouldn't wonder if it was so."
The bridesmaid whispered in the whale's ear.
"I wish you'd come with me to the old Witch of the Sea," she said. "Won't you, please?"
"I'll go to the ends of the ocean with you, miss, if you want me to," said Moby Dick; "but what for?"
"Oh," said the bridesmaid, looking straight in the eye which happened to be that side of the whale's head, "I'm a friend of the family, you know. I'm very much attached to the girls and very fond of the professor. I should like to help them if I could, and I think the witch is a wise woman, and it wouldn't do at all for the professor to go to her in his position, but it won't make any difference to me and you. Will you come now? It isn't far."
"Of course I will," said the whale. "Just sit on my head, and I'll take you there in no time."
Just then the bride's sister came out into the garden.
"Are you going, dear?" she said to the bridesmaid.
"Yes, I think I shall. Mr. Dick will see me home," said the other mermaid.
"It's been rather forlorn," sighed the bride's sister. "To think of his loving a wooden thing!"
"I suppose he had a right to if he chose," said the mermaid a little hastily. "I'm sure it's nothing to me."
The bride's sister was not angry at all. She kissed her friend good-night, and when she and Dick had gone sat down and cried a little.
Meanwhile Moby Dick and the bridesmaid were on their way to the old Witch of the Sea. She lived in a cave in a thick dark grove of seaweed. She was sitting before the door talking with a gossip of hers, one of the Salem witches, whose broomstick would carry her through the water as well as through the air. The broomstick, which was a spirited young one, was standing hitched at the door, impatiently stamping its stick part on the ground and switching the broom part about to keep off the little crabs.