And now happened to Tom a most wonderful thing; for he had not left the lobster five minutes before he came upon a water baby. A real, live water baby, sitting on the white sand, very busy about a little point of rock. And when it saw Tom it looked up for a moment and then cried, "Why, you are not one of us. You are a new baby! Oh, how delightful!" And it ran to Tom, and Tom ran to it, and they hugged and kissed each other for ever so long, they did not know why. But they did not want any introductions there under the water. At last Tom said, "Oh, where have you been all this while? I have been looking for you so long, and I have been so lonely." "We have been here for days and days. There are hundreds of us about the rocks. How was it you did not see us, or hear us when we sing and romp every evening before we go home?" Tom looked at the baby again, and then he said: "Well, this is wonderful! I have seen things just like you again and again, but I thought you were shells, or sea creatures. I never took you for water babies like myself." Now, was not that very odd? So odd, indeed, that you will, no doubt, want to know how it happened, and why Tom could never find a water baby till after he had got the lobster out of the pot. And, if you will read this story nine times over, and then think for yourself, you will find out why. It is not good for little boys to be told everything, and never to be forced to use their own wits. "Now," said the baby, "come and help me, or I shall not have finished before my brothers and sisters come, and it is time to go home." "What shall I help you at?" "At this poor, dear little rock; a great clumsy boulder came rolling by in the last storm, and knocked all its head off, and rubbed off all its flowers. And now I must plant it again with seaweeds, and coraline, and anemones, and I will make it the prettiest little rock-garden on all the shore." So they worked away at the rock, and planted it, and smoothed the sand down round it, and capital fun they had till the tide began to turn. And then Tom heard all the other babies coming, laughing and singing and shouting and romping; and the noise they made was just like the noise of the ripple. So he knew that he had been hearing and seeing the water babies all along; only he did not know them, because his eyes and ears were not opened. And in they came, dozens and dozens of them, some bigger than Tom and some smaller, all in the neatest little white bathing dresses; and when they found that he was a new baby, they hugged and kissed him, and then put him in the middle and danced around him on the sand, and there was no one ever so happy as poor little Tom. "Now then," they cried all at once, "we must come away home, we must come away home, or the tide will leave us dry. We have mended all the broken seaweed, and put all the rock-pools in order, and planted all the shells again in the sand, and nobody will see where the ugly storm swept last week."