It was not long before one of the maidens came up to him. At first she
seemed quite frightened, but only for a moment, and then she fetched
several others, and the mermaid saw that the prince was coming to life,
and that he smiled at all those around him, but he never smiled at her.
You see he did not know that she had saved him. She felt so sad
that when he was led away into the great building she dived sorrowfully
into the water and made her way home to her father's palace.

Always silent and thoughtful, she became more so now than ever. Her
sisters often asked her what she had seen on her first visit to the
surface, but she never would tell them anything.

Many an evening and many a morning she would rise to the place where she
had left the prince. She saw the fruit in the garden ripen, and then
gathered, she saw the snow melt on the mountain-tops, but she never saw
the prince, so she always went home still sadder than before. At home
her only consolation was to sit in her little garden with her arms
twined round the handsome marble statue which reminded her of the
prince. It was all in gloomy shade now, as she had ceased to tend her
flowers, and the garden had become a neglected wilderness of long stalks
and leaves entangled with the branches of the tree.

At last she could not bear it any longer, so she told one of her
sisters, and from her it soon spread to the others, but to no one else
except to one or two other mermaids who only told their dearest friends.
One of these knew all about the prince; she had also seen the
festivities on the ship; she knew where he came from and where his
kingdom was situated.

'Come, little sister!' said the other princesses, and, throwing their