Tom immediately set out to find his way to Shiny Wall, asking the way of
all the birds and beasts he met. He at length received help from the
petrels, who are Mother Carey's chickens, and so reached Shiny Wall. He
was dismayed to find that there was no gate, but taking the birds'
advice, he dived underneath the wall, and went along the bottom of the
sea for seven days and seven nights, until he arrived in Peacepool.
There sat Mother Carey, a marble lady on a marble throne--motionless,
restful, gazing down into the depths of the sea.
Following Mother Carey's directions, Tom at length arrived at the
Other-end-of-Nowhere, after meeting with many strange adventures. He had
not long arrived in this strange land when he was overtaken by several
policemen's truncheons, one of which conducted him to the prison where
Grimes was quartered. Here, on the roof, his head and shoulders just
showing above the top of chimney No. 343, was poor Mr. Grimes, with a
pipe that would not draw.
He thought Tom had simply come to laugh at him until he assured him that
he had only come to help. Suddenly Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid appeared. She
reminded Grimes that he was only suffering now what he had inflicted on
Tom. She told him, too, how his mother had gone to heaven, and would no
more weep for him. Gradually Grimes's heart softened, and when Tom
described her kindness to him at Vendale, Grimes wept. Then his tears
did for him what his mother's could not do, for as they fell they washed
the soot off his face and his clothes, and loosened the mortar from the
bricks of the chimney.
"Will you obey me if I give you a chance?" said Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid.
"As you please, ma'am. For I'm beat, and that's the truth," said he.
"Be it so, then--you may come out. But remember, disobey me again, and
into a worse place still you will go."
"I beg your pardon, ma'am, but I never disobeyed you that I know of. I
never set eyes upon you until I came to these ugly quarters."
"Never saw me? Who said 'Those that will be foul, foul they will be'?"
Grimes looked up, and Tom looked up, too; for the voice was that of the
Irishwoman who met them the day they went out together to Harthover. She
ordered Grimes to march off in the custody of the truncheon, who was to
see that he devoted himself to the considerable task of sweeping out the
crater of Etna.
Tom went back to St. Brandan's Isle, and there found Ellie--grown into a
beautiful woman. And he looked at her, and she looked at him; and they
liked the employment so much that they stood and looked for seven years
more, and neither spoke nor stirred.
At last they heard the fairy say, "Attention, children! Are you never
going to look at me again?"
They looked, and both of them cried out at once: "You are our dear Mrs.
Doasyouwouldbedoneby! No, you are good Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid; but you
are grown quite beautiful now."
"To you," she said. "But look again."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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