Chapter 7
One day Tom was sitting with his friend the lobster. There walked the little white lady, Ellie herself, and with her a very wise man indeed—Professor Ptthmllnsprts.
He was a very worthy kind good-natured little old gentleman, and very fond of children. He had met Sir John somewhere or other, and had made acquaintance with him. He become very fond of his children.
Ellie and he were walking on the rocks, and he was showing her about one in ten thousand of all the beautiful and curious things which were to be seen there. But little Ellie was not satisfied with them at all. She liked much better to play with live children, or even with dolls, which she could pretend were alive. At last she said, “I don’t care about all these things, because they can’t play with me, or talk to me. If there were little children now in the water, as there used to be, and I could see them, I should like that.”
“Children in the water, you strange little girl?” said the professor.
“Yes,” said Ellie. “I know there used to be children in the water, and mermaids too, and mermen. I saw them all in a picture at home, of a beautiful lady sailing in a car drawn by dolphins, and babies flying round her, and one sitting in her lap. The mermaids were swimming and playing, and the mermen trumpeting on conch-shells. It is called ‘The Triumph of Galatea’ There is a burning mountain in the picture behind. It hangs on the great staircase, and I have looked at it ever since I was a baby, and dreamt about it a hundred times. It is so beautiful, that it must be true.” But the professor would not agree to this, and said that no man was forced to believe anything to be true, but what he could see, hear, taste, or handle.
Now little Ellie was, a stupid little girl. Instead of being convinced by Professor Ptthmllnsprts’ arguments, she only asked the same question over again.
“But why are there not water-babies?”
I trust and hope that it was because the professor trod at that moment on the edge of a very sharp mussel, and hurt one of his corns sadly, that he answered quite sharply:
“Because there isn’t.”
It was not even good English, for the professor ought to have said, if he was so angry as to say anything of the kind. Because there are not or are none: or are none of them or because they do not exist.
And he groped with his net under the weeds so violently that he caught poor little Tom.
He felt the net very heavy and lifted it out quickly, with Tom all entangled in the meshes.
“Dear me!” he cried.
And he took him out.
“It has actually eyes!” he cried, “This is most extraordinary!”
“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. He had said a moment ago that there were none. What was he to do?
He would have liked, of course, to have taken Tom home in a bucket. But what would Ellie say, after what he had just told her? He hesitated a moment. He longed to keep Tom. Yet he half wished he never had caught him. At last he quite longed to get rid of him. So he turned away and poked Tom with his finger, for want of anything better to do. He said carelessly, “My dear little maid, you must have dreamt of water-babies last night. Your head is so full of them.”
Now Tom had been in the most horrible fright all the while He had kept as quiet as he could, for it was fixed in his little head that if a man with clothes on caught him, he might put clothes on him too, and make a dirty black chimney-sweep of him again. But when the professor poked him, it was more than he could bear. Between fright and rage, he turned and bit the professor’s finger till it bled.
“Oh! ah! yah!” cried he; and glad of an excuse to be rid of Tom, dropped him on to the seaweed. And thence he dived into the water and was gone in a moment.
“But it was a water-baby, and I heard it speak!” cried Ellie. “Ah, it is gone!” And she jumped down off the rock to try and catch Tom before he slipped into the sea.
Too late! What was worse; as she sprang down, she slipped, and fell some six feet, with her head on a sharp rock, and lay quite still.
The professor picked her up, and tried to waken her, and called to her, and cried over her, for he loved her very much. But she would not waken at all. So he took her up in his arms and carried her to her governess. They all went home; and little Ellie was put to bed, and lay there quite still. Only now and then, she woke up and called out about the water baby. But no one knew what she meant, and the professor did not tell, for he was ashamed to tell.
And, after a week, one moonlight night, the fairies came flying in at the window and brought her such a pretty pair of wings that she could not help putting them on. She flew with them out of the window, and over the land, and over the sea, and up through the clouds, and nobody heard or saw anything of her for a very long while.
