THE WATER BABIES
which nothing eats, not even those vulgar pike in the pond."
"I am not an eft!" said Tom; "efts have tails."
"You are an eft," said the otter, very positively; "I see your two hands quite plain, and I know you have a tail."
"I tell you I have not," said Tom. "Look here," and he turned his pretty little self quite round, and, sure enough, he had no more tail than you.
The otter might have got out of it by saying that Tom was a frog: but, like a great many other people, when she had once said a thing she stood to it, right or wrong; so she answered:
"I say you are an eft, and therefore you are, and not fit food for gentlefolk like me and my children. You may stay there till the salmon eat you" (she knew the salmon would not, but she wanted to frighten poor Tom). "Ha! ha! they will eat you, and we will eat them;" and the otter laughed such a wicked, cruel laugh—as you may hear them do sometimes; and the first time that you hear it you will probably think it is bogies.
"What are salmon?" asked Tom.
"Fish, you eft—great fish, nice fish to eat. They are the lords of the fish, and we are lords of the salmon;" and she laughed again. "We hunt them up and down the pools, and drive them up into a corner, the silly things; they are so proud, and bully the little trout, and the minnows, till they see us coming, and then they
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