stared at him, looking exactly like a fat old greasy negro with a gray pate.  And Tom, instead of being frightened, said, “How d’ye do, sir; what a beautiful place the sea is!” And the old seal, instead of trying to bite him, looked at him with his soft, sleepy, wink-eyes, and said, “Good tide to you, my little man; are you looking for your brothers and sisters?  I passed them all at play outside.”

[Illustration]

“Oh, then,” said Tom, “I shall have play-fellows at last,” and he swam on to the buoy, and got upon it (for he was quite out of breath) and sat there, and looked round for water babies; but there were none to be seen.

The sea breeze came in freshly with the tide and blew the fog away; and the little waves danced for joy around the buoy, and the old buoy danced with them.  The shadows of the clouds ran races over the bright blue sky, and yet never caught each other up; and the breakers plunged merrily upon the wide white sands, and jumped up over the rocks, to see what the green fields inside were like, and tumbled down and broke themselves all to pieces, and never minded it a bit, but mended themselves and jumped up again.  And the terns hovered over Tom like huge white dragon flies with black heads, and the gulls laughed like girls at play, and the sea pies, with their red bills and legs, flew to and fro from shore to shore, and whistled sweet and wild.  And Tom looked and looked, and listened; and he would have been very happy, if he could only have seen the water babies.  Then when the tide turned, he left the buoy, and swam round and round in search of them; but in vain.  Sometimes he thought he heard them laughing, but it was only the laughter of the ripples.  And sometimes he thought he saw them at the bottom, but it was only white and pink shells.  And once he was sure he had found one, for he saw two bright eyes peeping out of the sand.  So he dived down, and began scraping the sand away, and cried, “Don’t hide; I do want some one to play with so much!” And out jumped a great turbot with his ugly eyes and mouth all awry, and flopped away along the bottom, knocking poor Tom over.  And he sat down at the bottom of the sea, and cried salt tears from sheer disappointment.

To have come all this way, and faced so many dangers, and yet to find no water babies!  How hard!  Well, it did seem hard; but people, even little babies, cannot have all they want without waiting for it, and working for it too.

And Tom sat upon the buoy long days, long weeks, looking out to sea, and wondering when the water babies would come back; and yet they never came.

Then he began to ask all the strange things which came in out of the sea if they had seen any; and some said “Yes,” and some said nothing at all.

He asked the bass and the pollock; but they were so greedy after the shrimps that they did not care to answer him a word.

Then there came in a whole fleet of purple sea snails, floating along, each on a sponge full of foam; and Tom said, “Where do you come from, you pretty creatures? and have you seen the water babies?”