“At one place a school of little fish swam up to the surface of the water.  Klara knelt down and watched their pretty, graceful motions.  The longer she gazed the more fish she saw and the more beautiful they seemed.  Pale-blue fishes with silver spots.  Pale-pink ones with golden stripes.  Gorgeous red ones with jewelled black horns.  Brilliant yellow and green ones that shone like phosphorus.  And here and there, gliding among them, were what seemed little angel-fish like living rainbows, whose filmy wing-like fins changed color when they swam.

“Klara reached into the water and tried to catch some of these marvelous beings.

“But at her first motion—­bing!  The water looked as if it were streaked with rainbow lightning.  Swish!  It was dull and clear again, with nothing between her and the quiet, seaweed-covered bottom.

“A little farther along Klara came across a wonderful sea-grotto.  Again she knelt down on the Wake of Gold and watched.  At the bottom the sand was so white and shiny that it might have been made of star-dust.  Growing up from it were beds of marvelous seaflowers, opening and shutting delicate petals, beautiful seafans that waved with every ripple, high, thick shrubs and towering trees in which the fishes had built their nests.  In and out among all this undergrowth, frisked tiny sea-horses, ridden by mischievous sea-urchins.  They leaped and trotted and galloped as if they were so happy that they did not know what to do.  Klara felt that she must play with them.  She put one little foot into the water to attract their attention.  Bing!  The water seemed alive with scuttling things.  Swish!  The grotto was so quiet that she could not believe that there was anything living in it.

“A little farther on, Klara came upon a sight even more wonderful than this—­a village of mer-people.  It was set so far down in the water that it seemed a million miles away.  And yet the water was so clear that she felt she could touch the housetops.

“The mer-houses seemed to be made of a beautiful, sparkling white coral with big, wide-open windows through which the tide drifted.  The mer-streets seemed to be cobbled in pearl, the sidewalks to be paved in gold.  At their sides grew mer-trees, the highest she had ever seen, with all kinds of beautiful singing fish roosting in their branches.  Little mer-boats of carved pink coral with purple seaweed sails or of mother-of-pearl with rosy, mer-flower-petal sails, were floating through the streets.  In some, sat little mer-maidens, the sunlight flashing on their pretty green scales, on their long, golden tresses, on the bright mirrors they held in their hands.  Other boats held little mer-boys who made beautiful music on the harps they carried.