is written in my eyes, if you have eyes to see it there."

And they looked into her great, deep, soft eyes, and they changed again
and again into every hue, as the light changes in a diamond.

"Now read my name," said she, at last.

And her eyes flashed, for one moment, clear, white, blazing light: but
the children could not read her name; for they were dazzled, and hid
their faces in their hands.

"Not yet, young things, not yet," said she, smiling; and then she turned
to Ellie.

"You may take him home with you now on Sundays, Ellie. He has won his
spurs in the great battle, and become fit to go with you and be a man;
because he has done the thing he did not like."

So Tom went home with Ellie on Sundays, and sometimes on week-days, too;
and he is now a great man of science, and can plan railroads, and
steam-engines, and electric telegraphs, and rifled guns, and so forth;
and knows everything about everything, except why a hen's egg don't turn
into a crocodile, and two or three other little things which no one will
know till the coming of the Cocqcigrues. And all this from what he
learnt when he was a water-baby, underneath the sea.

"And of course Tom married Ellie?"

My dear child, what a silly notion! Don't you know that no one ever
marries in a fairy tale, under the rank of a prince or a princess?

"And Tom's dog?"

Oh, you may see him any clear night in July; for the old dog-star was so
worn out by the last three hot summers that there have been no dog-days
since; so that they had to take him down and put Tom's dog up in his
place. Therefore, as new brooms sweep clean, we may hope for some warm
weather this year. And that is the end of my story.

MORAL

_And now, my dear little man, what should we learn from this parable?_

_We should learn thirty-seven or thirty-nine things, I am not exactly
sure which: but one thing, at least, we may learn, and that is
this--when we see efts in the pond, never to throw stones at them, or
catch them with crooked pins, or put them into vivariums with
sticklebacks, that the sticklebacks may prick them in their poor little
stomachs, and make them jump out of the glass into somebody's work-box,
and so come to a bad end. For these efts are nothing else but the
water-babies who are stupid and dirty, and will not learn their lessons
and keep themselves clean; and, therefore (as comparative anatomists
will tell you fifty years hence, though they are not learned en