Page:The water-babies.djvu/210

THE WATER BABIES all dance, which they did most clumsily indeed; and then she asked them how they liked it; and when they said not at all, she let them go, because they had only done it out of foolish fashion, fancying it was for their chil- dren's good, as if wasps' waists and pigs' toes could be pretty or wholesome, or of any use to anybody.

Then she called up all the careless nursery-maids, and stuck pins into them all over, and wheeled them about in perambulators with tight straps across their stomachs and their heads and arms hanging over the side, till they were quite sick and stupid, and would have had sunstrokes; but, being under the water, they could only have water-strokes, which, I assure you, are nearly as bad, as you will find if you try to sit under a mill-wheel. And mind—when you hear a rumbling at the bottom of the sea, sailors will tell you that it is a groundswell, but now you know better. It is the old lady wheeling the maids about in perambulators.

And by that time she was so tired, she had to go to luncheon.

And after luncheon she set to work again, and called up all the cruel schoolmasters—whole regiments and brigades of them; and when she saw them, she frowned 186