It wore no clothes, but had the cocked-hat under its arm, and
seemed engaged thinking very seriously about something."
As I copy these words--_It wore no clothes, but had the cocked-hat under
its arm, and seemed engaged thinking very seriously about something_--it
seems to me that the portrait is strangely like something that I have
seen. And the more I think of it, the more I am convinced that the type
is familiar to me, and that, though I do not live in a fairy story, I
have been among the Merrows. And further still that any one who pleases
may go and see Coomara's cousins any day.
There can be no doubt of it! I have seen a Merrow--several Merrows. That
unclothed, over-harnessed form is before me now; sitting motionless on a
rock, "engaged thinking very seriously," till in some sudden impulse it
rises, turns up its red nose, makes some sharp angular movements with
head and elbows, and plunges down, with about as much grace as if some
stiff, red-nosed old admiral, dressed in nothing but cocked-hat,
spectacles, telescope, and a sword between his legs, were to take a
header from the quarter-deck into the sea.
I do not want to make a mystery about nothing. I should have resented it
thoroughly myself when I was young.
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