THE WATER BABIES
good warning for him to begin with, before he goes to school.
"Now, Tom, every Friday I come down here and call up all who have ill-used little children and serve them as they served the children."
And at that Tom was frightened, and crept under a stone; which made the two crabs who lived there very angry, and frightened their friend, the butter-fish, into flapping hysterics: but he would not move for them.
At first she called up all the doctors, who give little children so much physic (they were most of them old ones, for the young ones have learnt better, all but a few army surgeons who still fancy that a baby's inside is much like a Scotch grenadier's), and she set them all in a row, and very rueful they looked, for they knew what was coming.
And first she pulled all their teeth out, and then she bled them all round; and then she dosed them with calomel and jalap and salts and senna and brimstone and treacle; and horrible faces they made; and then she gave them a great emetic of mustard and water, and no basins; and began all over again; and that was the way she spent the morning.
And then she called up a whole troop of foolish ladies, who pinch up their children's waists and toes, and she laced them all up in tight stays, so that they were choked and sick, and their noses grew red, their hands and feet swelled; and then she crammed their poor feet into the most dreadfully tight boots, and made them
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