United States or Mali ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In the afternoon Tom went back again. He could not rest till he had found out what had become of Mr. Grimes. But this time Mr. Grimes was gone; and Tom made up his mind that he was turned into a water-baby. He might have made himself easy, poor little man; Mr. Grimes did not turn into a water-baby, or anything like one at all.
She was a great water-baby, with rather a contempt for my aquatic limitations. Then she thought it too idiotic to want to dry yourself with a towel, just like a mad white woman! White people were an immense joke to Nimmaylee. She conformed to their rules as one playing a new game. She has a little brother as black as herself.
And he stopped his little ears, and longed to swim away; and was very glad that he was a water-baby, and had nothing to do any more with horrid dirty men, with foul clothes on their backs, and foul words on their lips; but he dared not stir out of his hole: while the rock shook over his head with the trampling and struggling of the keepers and the poachers.
This is most extraordinary!" "No, I ain't!" cried Tom, as loud as he could; for he did not like to be called bad names. "It is a water-baby!" cried Ellie; and of course it was. "Water-fiddlesticks, my dear!" said the professor; and he turned away sharply. There was no denying it. It was a water-baby: and he had said a moment ago that there were none. What was he to do?
Wouldn't you like to be swimming down there under the water, where it is so cool and lovely and there would be nothing to trouble one?" "What a water-baby you are," smiled Phil, giving her chum's arm a soft pressure. "I sometimes think that you must have come out of a sea-shell. I suppose you are thinking of the old pearl diver again."
After Tom slipped away into the water again, he could not help thinking of Ellie, and longed to have her to play with, for he had not succeeded in finding any other water-babies. But soon he had something else to think of. One day he helped a lobster caught in a lobster-pot to get free; and then, five minutes after, he came upon a real live water-baby, sitting on the white sand.
Neither did the live coals, which were lying about in plenty, burn him; for, being a water-baby, his radical humours were of a moist and cold nature, as you may read at large in Lemnius, Cardan, Van Helmont, and other gentlemen, who knew as much as they could, and no man can know more. And at last they came to chimney No. 345.
But he was not successful in this, for the creature opened its eyes as he laid his hand on its hair, and a furious fight ensued. Sometimes it seemed as though Little Brother would be killed, but finally he was able to scalp the poor water-baby and get possession of the beautiful sunshine-golden-hair. Every one can see where this fight occurred.
But nothing would do; for he screamed and cried all day for a water-baby, to come and drive away the monsters; and of course they did not try to find one, because they did not believe in them, and were thinking of nothing but Bumpsterhausen's blue follicles; having, as usual, set the cart before the horse, and taken the effect for the cause.
So somehow or other the Jack-tars got the lobster out, and set the mayor free, and put him ashore at the Barbican. He never went lobster-catching again; and we will hope he put no more salt in the tobacco, not even to sell his brother's beer. And now happened to Tom a most wonderful thing; for he had not left the lobster five minutes before he came upon a water-baby.
Word Of The Day