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Updated: May 4, 2025
"I mean I didn't mean to stay away so long. I didn't know how to get back." "I told you not to leave her! And you could have got back perfectly, you little coward!" Tommy shuddered, and said no more. Though hanging over Clare's back he knew presently, by his stopping, that they had come to the heap. There was only that heap and the wall between him and the water-but!
Clare sprang up; and Tommy, urged on the one side by the fear of the drunken smith, and drawn on the other by the dread of being abandoned by Clare, climbed shuddering after him. "Mind the water-but, Clare!" he gasped; "an' gi' me a hand up." Clare had already turned on the top of the wall to help him. "Now let me go first!" said Tommy, the moment he had his foot on it. "I know how to get down."
The milk-woman, however, not ungraciously granted him the two matches he begged for. On his way to baby, he almost hoped Tommy would not return: he would gladly be saved putting him in the water-but! He forgot him again as he drew near the nursery, and for a long while after he reached it. He found the infant and the dog lying as he had left them.
"Tommy, I forgive you," he said solemnly, "and will be friends with you again; but I have said it, and I was right to say it, and into the water-but you must go! I can't trust your word now, and I think I shall be able to trust it after that." Ere he had finished the words, Tommy lifted up his voice in a most unearthly screech.
"Why, ma'am," answered Clare, "she's my own baby! It was I took her out of the water-but! I washed and fed her every day! not that I could do it so well as you, ma'am!" She gave him the baby, and watched him with the eye of a seeress, for she had a wonderful insight into character, and that is one of the roots of prophecy.
With frightful hindrance from the overgrowth, he found the prisoned door by strange perversion become a ladder, gained by it the top of the wall, and sped along as if pursued by an incarnate dread. Horror of horrors! all at once the moon again looked up at him from below: he was within a yard or two of the big water-but!
"I don't know, ma'am; she only came to us last night." "Who brought her?" She imagined the boy a simpleton, and expected one of such answers as inconvenient questions in natural history receive from nurses. "I don't know, ma'am. I took her out of the water-but." The thing grew bewildering. "Who put her there?" "I don't know, ma'am." "Whose baby is she, then?" "Mine, I think, ma'am."
"Well, you hadn't the pluck to go yourself! You stopt in!" cried Tommy, putting his hand to his head, but more sorely hurt that an idiot should call him a fool. "Come and let me see, Tommy," said Clare. He wanted to find out if he was much hurt; but Tommy thought he wanted to go to the water-but, and screamed. "Hold your tongue, you little idiot!" cried Clare.
Then, and not till then, returned the thought what had Tommy done with himself? Left to himself he was sure to go stealing! He might have been taken in the act! Clare could hardly believe he had actually run away from him. On the other hand, he had left the baby, and knew that if he returned he would be put in the water-but!
He did not foresee how ill things would go for him did not see that a rat had taken his place beside the baby, and that he would not get back before Clare; but the vision of the water-but had often flashed upon his inner eye, and it had not been the bliss of his solitude.
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