At last Tom’s turn came, and she put something in his mouth, and lo! and behold, it was a cold, hard pebble.

“Who put pebbles in the sea-anemones’ mouths to make them fancy they had caught a good dinner?  As you did to them, so I must do to you.”

Tom thought her very hard, but she showed him she had to do it because it was her work.  She told him, too, that she was the ugliest fairy in the world, and would be until people learned to behave as they should, when she would grow as handsome as her sister, Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby, the loveliest fairy in the world.

Tom tried hard to be good on Saturday; he did not frighten one crab, nor put one pebble into a sea-anemone’s mouth.

Sunday came, and so did Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby.  All the children danced round her, for she had the sweetest, merriest face Tom had ever seen.

“He’s the new water-baby,” they informed the fairy.  “He never had any mother.”

“Then I will be his mother,” she said, and took him in her arms.  And Tom looked up in her face, and loved her, and fell asleep for very love.  When he awoke she was telling the children a story.

“Now,” she said to Tom, as she prepared to go, “will you be good, and torment no sea-beasts until I come again?”

Tom promised, and tormented no sea-beasts after that as long as he lived; and he is quite alive, I assure you, still.

IV.—­At the Other-End-of-Nowhere

Being happy and comfortable does not always mean being good; and so it was with Tom.  He had everything he could wish for in St. Brandan’s fairy isle.  But now he had grown so fond of lollipops that he could think of nothing else, and longed to go to the cabinet where they were kept.  At last he went to take just one; then he had one more, and another, and another, until they were all gone.  And all the while Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid stood close behind him, though he neither heard nor saw her.

Tom was very surprised when she came again to see that she had just as many lollipops as before.  He thought therefore that she could not know.

But he was very unhappy all that week, and long after it, too.  And because his conscience had been pricking him inside, his outside grew horny and prickly as well, until he could bear it no longer, and told Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid all about it, and asked her to take away the prickles.  But she told him only he could do that, that he must go to school, and she would fetch him a schoolmistress.

Soon she returned with the most beautiful little girl that was ever seen.  Tom begged her to show him how to be good, and get rid of his prickles.  So she began, and taught him every day except on Sunday, when she went away.  In a short time all Tom’s prickles had disappeared.  Then the little girl knew him, she said, for the little chimney-sweep who had come into the bedroom.

“And I know you,” said Tom; “you are the little white lady I saw in bed.”  And then they began telling each other all their story.  And then they set to work at their lessons again, and both liked them so well that they went on till seven full years were past and gone.