fine figure and slender waist. "Their girls can't be half as pretty as
we are."

"Well, I should like to be a real woman for a while, just to try it, and
see how it feels to walk on legs," said another, rather demurely, as if
afraid the other mermaids might not like her remark.

They didn't. Out sounded a lusty chorus, "No! No! Horrible! What an
idea! Who wouldn't be a mermaid?"

"Why, I've heard," cried one, "that real women have to work, wash their
husband's clothes, milk cows, dig potatoes, scrub floors and take care
of calves. Who would be a woman? Not I"--and her snub nose--since it
could not turn up--grew wide at the roots. She was sneering at the idea
that a creature in petticoats could ever look lovelier than one in
shining scales.

"Besides," said she, "think of their big noses, and I'm told, too, that
girls have even to wear hairpins."

At this--the very thought that any one should have to bind up their
tresses--there was a shock of disgust with some, while others clapped
their hands, partly in envy and partly in glee.

But the funniest things the mermaids heard of were gloves, and they
laughed heartily over such things as covers for the fingers. Just for
fun, one of the little mermaids used to draw some bag-like seaweed over
her hands, to see how such things looked.

One day, while sunning themselves in the grass on the island, one of