the water and began crying and screaming for Mrs.
Bedonebyasyoudid--which perhaps was the best thing to do--for she came
in a moment.

"Oh!" said Tom. "Oh dear, oh dear! I have been naughty to Ellie, and I
have killed her--I know I have killed her."

"Not quite that," said the fairy; "but I have sent her away home, and
she will not come back again for I do not know how long."

And at that Tom cried so bitterly that the salt sea was swelled with his
tears, and the tide was .3,954,620,819 of an inch higher than it had
been the day before: but perhaps that was owing to the waxing of the
moon. It may have been so; but it is considered right in the new
philosophy, you know, to give spiritual causes for physical
phenomena--especially in parlour-tables; and, of course, physical
causes for spiritual ones, like thinking, and praying, and knowing right
from wrong. And so they odds it till it comes even, as folks say down in
Berkshire.

"How cruel of you to send Ellie away!" sobbed Tom. "However, I will find
her again, if I go to the world's end to look for her."

The fairy did not slap Tom, and tell him to hold his tongue: but she
took him on her lap very kindly, just as her sister would have done; and
put him in mind how it was not her fault, because she was wound up
inside, like watches, and could not help doing things whether she liked
or not. And then she told him how he had been in the nursery long
enough, and must go out now and see the world, if he intended ever to be
a man; and how he must go all alone by himself, as every one else that
ever was born has to go, and see with his own eyes, and smell with his
own nose, and make his own bed and lie on it, and burn his own fingers
if he put them into the fire. And then she told him how many fine things
there were to be seen in the world, and what an odd, curious, pleasant,
orderly, respectable, well-managed, and, on the whole, successful (as,
indeed, might have been expected) sort of a place it was, if people
would only be tolerably brave and honest and good in it; and then she
told him not to be afraid of anything he met, for nothing would harm him
if he remembered all his lessons, and did what he knew was right. And at
last she comforted poor little Tom so much that he was quite eager to
go, and wanted to set out that minute. "Only," he said, "if I might see
Ellie once before I went!"

"Why do you want that?"

"Because--because I should be so much happier if I thoug