THE WATER BABIES
"Much obliged to you, indeed; but I don't want it yet."
"Want what?" said Tom, quite taken aback by his impudence.
"Your leg, which you are kind enough to hold out for me to sit on. I must just go and see after my wife for a few minutes. Dear me! what a troublesome business a family is!" (though the idle little rogue did nothing at all, but left his poor wife to lay all the eggs by herself). "When I come back, I shall be glad of it, if you'll be so good as to keep it sticking out just so"; and off he flew.
Tom thought him a very cool sort of personage; and still more so when, in five minutes, he came back, and said, "Ah, you were tired waiting? Well, your other leg will do as well."
And he popped himself down on Tom's knee, and began chatting away in his squeaking voice.
"So you live under the water? It's a low place. I lived there for some time, and was very shabby and dirty. But I didn't choose that that should last. So I turned respectable, and came up to the top and put on this grey suit. It's a very business-like suit, you think, don't you?"
"Very neat and quiet indeed," said Tom.
"Yes; one must be quiet, and neat, and respectable, and all that sort of thing for a little when one becomes a family man. But I'm tired of it, that's the truth. I've done quite enough business, I consider, in the last
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