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.

Tom asked the dragon fly what it could be; but of course, with his short sight, he could not even see it, though it was not ten yards away.  So Tom took the neatest little header into the water, and started off to see for himself; and, when he came near, the ball turned out to be four or five beautiful otters, many times larger than Tom, who were swimming about, and rolling, and diving, and twisting, and wrestling, and cuddling, and kissing, and biting, and scratching, in the most charming fashion that ever was seen.

But when the biggest of them saw Tom, she darted out from the rest, and cried in the water language sharply enough, “Quick, children, here is something to eat, indeed!” and came at poor Tom, showing such a wicked pair of eyes, and such a set of sharp teeth in a grinning mouth, that Tom, who had thought her very handsome, said to himself, “Handsome is that handsome does,” and slipped in between the water-lily roots as fast as he could, and then turned round and made faces at her.

[Illustration:  Tom escaped the otter]

“Come out,” said the wicked old otter, “or it will be worse for you.”

But Tom looked at her from between two thick roots, and shook them with all his might, making horrible faces all the while, just as he used to grin through the railings at the old women, when he lived before.  It was not quite well bred, no doubt; but you know, Tom had not finished his education yet.

“Come away, children,” said the otter in disgust, “it is not worth eating, after all.  It is only a nasty eft, which nothing eats, not even those vulgar pike in the pond.”

“I am not an eft!” said Tom; “efts have tails.”

“You are an eft,” said the otter, very positively; “I see your two hands quite plain, and I know you have a tail.”

“I tell you I have not,” said Tom.  “Look here!” and he turned his pretty little self quite round; and sure enough, he had no more tail than you.

The otter might have got out of it by saying that Tom was a frog; but, like a great many other people, when she had once said a thing she stood to it, right or wrong; so she answered: 

“I say you are an eft, and therefore you are, and not fit food for gentlefolk like me and my children.  You may stay there till the salmon eat you” (she knew the salmon would not, but she wanted to frighten poor Tom).  “Ha! ha! they will eat you, and we will eat them;” and the otter laughed such a wicked, cruel laugh—­as you may hear them do sometimes; and the first time that you hear it you will probably think it is bogies.