The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby by Charles Kingsley

Author:Charles Kingsley
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Chimney sweeps -- Juvenile fiction, Fairy tales -- England
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2023-11-08T18:46:57+00:00

“Stern Law­giver! yet thou dost wear

The God­head’s most be­nig­nant grace;

Nor know we any­thing so fair

As is the smile upon thy face:

Flowers laugh be­fore thee on their beds

And fra­grance in thy foot­ing treads;

Thou dost pre­serve the stars from wrong;

And the most an­cient heav­ens, through Thee, are fresh and strong.”

Wordsworth, “Ode to Duty”

V

But what be­came of little Tom?

He slipped away off the rocks in­to the wa­ter, as I said be­fore. But he could not help think­ing of little El­lie. He did not re­mem­ber who she was; but he knew that she was a little girl, though she was a hun­dred times as big as he. That is not sur­pris­ing: size has noth­ing to do with kindred. A tiny weed may be first cous­in to a great tree; and a little dog like Vick knows that Li­on­ess is a dog too, though she is twenty times lar­ger than her­self. So Tom knew that El­lie was a little girl, and thought about her all that day, and longed to have had her to play with; but he had very soon to think of some­thing else. And here is the ac­count of what happened to him, as it was pub­lished next morn­ing in the Wa­ter­proof Gaz­ette, on the finest watered pa­per, for the use of the great fairy, Mrs. Bedoneby­asy­oud­id, who reads the news very care­fully every morn­ing, and es­pe­cially the po­lice cases, as you will hear very soon.

He was go­ing along the rocks in three-fathom wa­ter, watch­ing the pol­lock catch prawns, and the wrasses nibble barnacles off the rocks, shells and all, when he saw a round cage of green withes; and in­side it, look­ing very much ashamed of him­self, sat his friend the lob­ster, twid­dling his horns, in­stead of thumbs.

“What, have you been naughty, and have they put you in the lockup?” asked Tom.

The lob­ster felt a little in­dig­nant at such a no­tion, but he was too much de­pressed in spir­its to ar­gue; so he only said, “I can’t get out.”

“Why did you get in?”

“After that nasty piece of dead fish.” He had thought it looked and smelt very nice when he was out­side, and so it did, for a lob­ster: but now he turned round and ab­used it be­cause he was angry with him­self.

“Where did you get in?”

“Through that round hole at the top.”

“Then why don’t you get out through it?”

“Be­cause I can’t”: and the lob­ster twiddled his horns more fiercely than ever, but he was forced to con­fess.

“I have jumped up­wards, down­wards, back­wards, and side­ways, at least four thou­sand times; and I can’t get out: I al­ways get up un­der­neath there, and can’t find the hole.”

Tom looked at the trap, and hav­ing more wit than the lob­ster, he saw plainly enough what was the mat­ter; as you may if you will look at a lob­ster-pot.

“Stop a bit,” said Tom. “Turn your tail up to me, and I’ll pull you through hind­fore­most, and then you won’t stick in the spikes.”

But the lob­ster was so stu­pid and clumsy that he couldn’t hit the hole.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.