Chapter 8 No.8

So far I have been very full, I know, and verisimilitude has been my watchword rather than the true affidavit style. But if I have made it clear to the reader just how the Sea Lady landed and just how it was possible for her to land and become a member of human society without any considerable excitement on the part of that society, such poor pains as I have taken to tint and shadow and embellish the facts at my disposal will not have been taken in vain. She positively and quietly settled down with the Buntings.

Within a fortnight she had really settled down so thoroughly that, save for her exceptional beauty and charm and the occasional faint touches of something a little indefinable in her smile, she had become a quite passable and credible human being. She was a cripple, indeed, and her lower limb was most pathetically swathed and put in a sort of case, but it was quite generally understood-I am afraid at Mrs. Bunting's initiative-that presently they-Mrs. Bunting said "they," which was certainly almost as far or even a little farther than legitimate prevarication may go-would be as well as ever.

She positively and quietly settled down with the Buntings.

"Of course," said Mrs. Bunting, "she will never be able to bicycle again--"

That was the sort of glamour she threw about it.