“‘I’ll come all the way out,’ says she, laughing, ’unless you give me some of wot you got in that bucket.’

“‘Shame,’ I repeated, ‘ain’t you got no sense of decency?’

“‘None wot so ever,’ she replied, ’but I’m awfully thirsty.  Gimme a drink or out I’ll come.’

“Now you can see for yourself that I couldn’t afford to have a woman in her get-up sitting around with me on the end of a dock, being married as I was and my folks all good honest church folks, and bright moon shining in the sky to boot, so I was just naturally forced to give in to the brazen thing and reach her down the bucket, a full one at that.  It came back empty and she was forwarder than ever.

“‘Say,’ she cries out, swimming around most exasperatingly, ’you’re a nice old party.  What do your folks know you by?’

“I told her my name was none of her business and that I was a married man and that I wished she’d go away and let me go on with my night watching.

“‘I’m married too,’ says she, in a conversational tone, ’to an awful mess.  You’re pretty fuzzy, but I’d swap him for you any day.  Come on into the sea with me and we’ll swim down to Gold Fish Arms and stick around until we get a drink.  I know lots of the boys down there.  There ain’t no liquor dealers where I come from,’ and with this if you will believe me she flips a bucket full of water into my lap with the neatest little scale spangled tail you ever seen.

“‘No,’ says I, ’my mind’s made up.  I ain’t agoing to go swimming around with no semi-stewed, altogether nude mermaid.  It ain’t right.  It ain’t Christian.’

“‘I got a hat,’ says she reflectively, ’and I ain’t so stewed but wot I can’t swim.  Wot do you think of that hat?  One of the boys stole it from his old woman and gave it to me.  Come on, let’s take a swim.’

“‘No,’ says I, ‘I ain’t agoing.’

“’Just ‘cause I ain’t all dolled up in a lot of clothes?’ says she.

“‘Partly,’ says I, ’and partly because you are a mermaid.  I ain’t agoing messing around through the water with no mermaid.  I ain’t never done it and I ain’t agoing to begin it now.’

“’If I get some clothes on and dress all up pretty, will you go swimming with me then?’ she asks pleadingly.

“‘Well that’s another thing,’ says I, noncommittal like.

“‘All right,’ says she, ’gimme something out of that other bucket and I’ll go away.  Come on, old sweetheart,’ and she held up her arms to me.

“Well, I gave her the bucket and true to form she emptied it.  Then she began to argue and plead with me until I nearly lost an ear.

“‘No,’ I yells at her, ’I ain’t agoing to spend the night arguing with a drunken mermaid.  Go away, now; you said you would.’

“‘All right, old love,’ she replies good-naturedly, ’but I’ll see you again some time.  I ain’t ever going home again.  I hate it down there.’  And off she swims in an unsteady manner in the direction of the Gold Fish Arms.  She was singing and shouting something terrible.