And all the while Tom was swimming about in the river, with a pretty little lace collar of gills about his neck, as lively as a grig, and as clean as a fresh-run salmon.

Now, if you don’t like my story, then go to the schoolroom and learn your multiplication table, and see if you like that better.  Some people, no doubt, would do so.  So much the better for us, if not for them.  It takes all sorts, they say, to make a world.

CHAPTER III

Tom was now quite amphibious, and what is better still, he was clean.  For the first time in his life he felt how comfortable it was to have nothing on him but himself.  But he only enjoyed it; he did not know it, or think about it; just as you enjoy life and health, and yet never think about being alive and healthy; and may it be long before you have to think about it!

He did not remember having ever been dirty.  Indeed, he did not remember any of his old troubles—­being tired, or hungry, or sent up dark chimneys.  Since that sweet sleep, he had forgotten all about his master, and Harthover Place, and the little white girl, and in a word all that had happened to him when he lived before; and what was best of all, he had forgotten all the bad words which he had learned from Grimes, and the rude boys with whom he used to play.

That is not strange; for you know, when you came into this world, and became a land baby, you remembered nothing.  So why should he, when he became a water baby?

But Tom was very happy in the water.  He had been sadly overworked in the land world; and so now, to make up for that, he had nothing but holidays in the water world for a long, long time to come.  He had nothing to do now but enjoy himself, and look at all the pretty things which are to be seen in the cool, clear water world, where the sun is never too hot and the frost is never too cold.

And what did he live on?  Water cresses, perhaps; or perhaps water gruel, and water milk; too many land babies do so likewise.  But we do not know what one tenth of the water-things eat; so we are not answerable for the water babies.

Sometimes he went along the smooth gravel water-ways, looking at the crickets which ran in and out among the stones, as rabbits do on land; or he climbed over the ledges of rock, and saw the sand pipes hanging in thousands, with every one of them a pretty little head and legs peeping out; or he went into a still corner, and watched the caddises eating dead sticks as greedily as you would eat plum pudding, and building their houses with silk and glue.  Very fanciful ladies they were; none of them would keep to the same materials for a day.  One would begin with some pebbles; then she would stick on a piece of green wood; then she found a shell, and stuck it on too; and the poor shell was alive, and did not like at all being taken to build houses with; but the caddis did not let him have any voice in the matter, being rude and