one promised the others to give a full account of all that she had seen,
and found most wonderful on the first day. Their grandmother could never
tell them enough, for there were so many things about which they wanted
information.

None of them was so full of longings as the youngest, the very one who
had the longest time to wait, and who was so quiet and dreamy. Many a
night she stood by the open windows and looked up through the dark blue
water which the fish were lashing with their tails and fins. She could
see the moon and the stars, it is true; their light was pale, but they
looked much bigger through the water than they do to our eyes. When she
saw a dark shadow glide between her and them, she knew that it was
either a whale swimming above her, or else a ship laden with human
beings. I am certain they never dreamt that a lovely little mermaid was
standing down below, stretching up her white hands towards the keel.

The eldest princess had now reached her fifteenth birthday, and was to
venture above the water. When she came back she had hundreds of things
to tell them, but the most delightful of all, she said, was to lie in
the moonlight, on a sandbank in a calm sea, and to gaze at the large
town close to the shore, where the lights twinkled like hundreds of
stars; to listen to music and the noise and bustle of carriages and
people, to see the many church towers and spires, and to hear the bells
ringing; and just because she could not go on shore she longed for that
most of all.

Oh, how eagerly the youngest sister listened! and when, later in the
evening she stood at the open window and looked up through the dark blue
water, she thought of the big town with all its noise and bustle, and
fancied that she could even hear the church bells ringing.