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. “It is a water-baby!” cried Ellie; and of course it was. “Water-fiddlesticks, my dear!” said the professor; and he turned away sharply. There was no denying it. It was a water-baby: and he had said a moment ago that there were none. What was he to do? He would have liked, of course, to have taken Tom home in a bucket. He would not have put him in spirits. Of course not. He would have kept him alive, and petted him (for he was a very kind old gentleman), and written a book about him, and given him two long names, of which the first would have said a little about Tom, and the second all about himself; for of course he would have called him Hydrotecnon Ptthmllnsprtsianum, or some other long name like that; for they are forced to call everything by long names now, because they have used up all the short ones, ever since they took to making nine species out of one. But—what would all the learned men say to him after his speech at the British Association? And what would Ellie say, after what he had just told her?