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THE WATER BABIES "But why are there not water-babies?"

I trust and hope that it was because the professor trod at that moment on the edge of a very sharp mussel and hurt one of his corns sadly, that he answered quite sharply, forgetting that he was a scientific man, and therefore ought to have known that he couldn't know; and that he was a logician, and therefore ought to have known that he could not prove a universal negative—I say, I trust and hope it was because the mussel hurt his corn, that the professor answered quite sharply—

"Because there ain't!"

Which was not even good English, my dear little boy, for, as you must know, from Aunt Agitate's Arguments, the professor ought to have said, if he was so angry as to say anything of the kind—Because there are not; or are none, or are none of them; or (if he had been reading Aunt Agitate, too) because they do not exist.

And he groped with his net under the weeds so violently that, as it befell, he caught poor little Tom.

He felt the net very heavy, and lifted it out quickly, with Tom all entangled in the meshes.

"Dear me!"—he cried, "what a large pink Holothurian; with hands, too. It must be connected with Synapta."

And he took him out.

"It has actually eyes!" he cried. "Why, it must be a Cephalopod! This is most extraordinary."

"No, I ain't!" cried Tom, as loud as he could; for he did not like to be called bad names. 143