“Oh!  Eh!” cried he, and dropped Tom on to the seaweed, whence he was gone in a moment.

“But it was a water-baby!” cried Ellie.  “Ah, it is gone!” And she jumped down off the rock.  But she slipped and fell with her head on a sharp rock, and lay quite still.

The professor picked her up and took her home, and she was put to bed.  But she would not waken at all, and after a week, one moonlight night the fairies came flying in at the window, and brought her a pair of wings.  And she flew away, and nobody heard or saw anything of her for a long while.

III.—­In St. Brandon’s Fairy Isle

After Tom slipped away into the water again, he could not help thinking of Ellie, and longed to have her to play with, for he had not succeeded in finding any other water-babies.  But soon he had something else to think of.  One day he helped a lobster caught in a lobster-pot to get free; and then, five minutes after, he came upon a real live water-baby, sitting on the white sand.

And it ran to Tom, and Tom ran to it, and they hugged and kissed each other for ever so long.  At last Tom said.  “Well, this is wonderful!  I have seen things just like you again and again, but I thought you were shells or sea-creatures.”

Now, was not this very odd?  So odd, indeed, that you will, no doubt, want to know how it happened, and why Tom could never find a water-baby till after he had got the lobster out of the pot.  But if you will read this story nine times over, you will find out why.  It is not good for little boys and girls to be told everything and never to be forced to make use of their own wits.

“Now,” said the baby, “come and help me plant this rock which got all its flowers knocked off in the last storm, or I shall not have finished before my brothers and sisters come, and it is now time to go home.”

So they worked away at the rock, and planted it, and smoothed the sand down round it, and capital fun they had till the tide began to turn.  And then Tom heard all the other babies coming, laughing and singing and romping; and the noise they made was just like the noise of a ripple.

And in they came, dozens and dozens of them, and when they found that he was a new baby, they hugged and kissed him.  And there was no one ever so happy as poor little Tom, and he gaily swam away with them to their home in the caves beneath St. Brandan’s fairy isle.  But I wish Tom had given up all his naughty tricks.  He would meddle with the creatures, frighten the crabs, and put stones in the anemones’ mouths to make them fancy dinner was coming.

The other children warned him, and said, “Take care what you are at, as Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid is coming on Friday.”

Early one Friday morning this tremendous lady came, indeed.  Very ugly Tom thought her, with her green spectacles on a great hooked nose and a big birch rod under her arm.  She looked at all the children, and seemed pleased with them, for she gave sea-cakes or sea-lollipops to them all.