The Water-Babies

“So you live under the water? It’s a low place. I lived there for some time; and was very shabby and dirty. But I didn’t choose that that should last. So I turned respectable, and came up to the top, and put on this grey suit. It’s a very businesslike suit, you think, don’t you?”

“Very neat and quiet indeed,” said Tom.

“Yes, one must be quiet and neat and respectable, and all that sort of thing for a little, when one becomes a family man. But I’m tired of it, that’s the truth. I’ve done quite enough business, I consider, in the last week, to last me my life. So I shall put on a ball-dress, and go out and be a smart man, and see the gay world, and have a dance or two. Why shouldn’t one be jolly if one can?”

“And what will become of your wife?”

“Oh! she is a very plain stupid creature, and that’s the truth; and thinks about nothing but eggs. If she chooses to come, why she may; and if not, why I go without her;—and here I go.”

And, as he spoke, he turned quite pale, and then quite white.

“Why, you’re ill!” said Tom. But he did not answer.

“You’re dead,” said Tom, looking at him as he stood on his knee as white as a ghost.

“No, I ain’t!” answered a little squeaking voice over his head. “This is me up here, in my ball-dress; and that’s my skin. Ha, ha! you could not do such a trick as that!”

And no more Tom could, nor Houdin, nor Robin, nor Frikell, nor all the conjurers in the world. For the little rogue had jumped clean out of his own skin, and left it standing on Tom’s knee, eyes, wings, legs, tail, exactly as if it had been alive.

“Ha, ha!” he said, and he jerked and skipped up and down, never stopping an instant, just as if he had St. Vitus’s dance. “Ain’t I a pretty fellow now?”

And so he was; for his body was white, and his tail orange, and his eyes all the colours of a peacock’s tail. And what was the oddest of all, the whisks at the end of his tail had grown five times as long as they were before.

“Ah!” said he, “now I will see the gay world. My living won’t cost me much, for I have no mouth, you see, and no inside; so I can never be hungry nor have the stomachache neither.”

No more he had. He had grown as dry and hard and empty as a quill, as such silly shallow-hearted fellows deserve to grow.

But, instead of being ashamed of his emptiness, he was quite proud of it, as a good many fine gentlemen are, and began flirting and flipping up and down, and singing—

And he danced up and down for three days and three nights, till he grew so tired, that he tumbled into the water, and floated down. But what became of him Tom never knew, and he himself never minded; for Tom heard him singing to the last, as he floated down—

“To drive dull care away-ay-ay!”

And if he did not care, why nobody else cared either.

But one day Tom had a new adventure. He was sitting on a water-lily leaf, he and his friend the dragonfly, watching the gnats dance. The dragonfly had eaten as many as he wanted, and was sitting quite still and sleepy, for it was very hot and bright. The gnats (who did not care the least for their poor brothers’ death) danced a foot over his head quite happily, and a large black fly settled within an inch of his nose, and began washing his own face and combing his hair with his paws: but the dragonfly never stirred, and kept on chatting to Tom about the times when he lived under the water.

Suddenly, Tom heard the strangest noise up the stream; cooing, and grunting, and whining, and squeaking, as if you had put into a bag two stock-doves, nine mice, three guinea-pigs, and a blind puppy, and left them there to settle themselves and make music.

He looked up the water, and there he saw a sight as strange as the noise; a great ball rolling over and over down the stream, seeming one moment of soft brown fur, and the next of shining glass: and yet it was not a ball; for sometimes it broke up and streamed away in pieces, and then it joined again; and all the while the noise came out of it louder and louder.