THE WATER BABIES
"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?
He would have liked, of course, to have taken Tom home in a bucket. He would not have put him in spirits. Of course not. He would have kept him alive, and petted him (for he was a very kind old gentleman), and written a book about him, and given him two long names, of which the first would have said a little about Tom, and the second all about himself; for, of course, he would have called him Hydrotecnon Ptthmllnsprtsianum, or some other long name like that; for they are forced to call everything by long names now, because they have used up all the short ones, ever since they took to making nine species out of one. But—what would all the learned men say to him after his speech at the British Association? And what would Ellie say after what he had just told her?
There was a wise old heathen once who said, "Maxima debetur pueris reverentia"—"the greatest reverence is due to children"—that is, that grown people should never say or do anything wrong before children, lest they set them a bad example. Cousin Cramchild says it means, "The greatest respectfulness is expected from little boys." But he was raised in a country where little
144
