THE WATER BABIES
hairier children still; and everyone wished to marry hairy husbands, and have hairy children, too; for the climate was growing so damp that none but the hairy ones could live: all the rest coughed and sneezed, and had sore throats, and went into consumptions, before they could grow up to men and women.
Then the fairy turned over the next five hundred years. And they were fewer still.
"Why, there is one on the ground picking up roots," said Ellie, "and he cannot walk upright."
No more he could; for in the same way that the shape of their feet had altered, the shape of their backs had altered also.
"Why," cried Tom, "I declare they are all apes."
"Something fearfully like it, poor, foolish creatures," said the fairy. "They are grown so stupid now that they can hardly think, for none of them have used their wits for many hundred years. They have almost forgotten, too, how to talk. For each stupid child forgot some of the words it heard from its stupid parents, and had not wits enough to make fresh words for itself. Besides, they are grown so fierce and suspicious and brutal that they keep out of each other's way, and mope and sulk in the dark forests, never hearing each other's voice till they have forgotten almost what speech is like. I am afraid they will all be apes very soon, and all by doing only what they liked."
And in the next five hundred years they were all dead and gone, by bad food and wild beasts and hunters;
222
