yah ! '' cried he ; and glad of an excuse to be rid of Tom , dropped him on to the seaweed , and thence he dived into the water and was gone in a moment . `` But it was a water-baby , and I heard it speak ! '' cried Ellie . `` Ah , it is gone ! '' And she jumped down off the rock , to try and catch Tom before he slipped into the sea . Too late ! and what was worse , as she sprang down , she slipped , and fell some six feet , with her head on a sharp rock , and lay quite still . The professor picked her up , and tried to waken her , and called to her , and cried over her , for he loved her very much : but she would not waken at all . So he took her up in his arms and carried her to her governess , and they all went home ; and little Ellie was put to bed , and lay there quite still ; only now and then she woke up and called out about the water-baby : but no one knew what she meant , and the professor did not tell , for he was ashamed to tell . And , after a week , one moonlight night , the fairies came flying in at the window and brought her such a pretty pair of wings that she could not help putting them on ; and she flew with them out of the window , and over the land , and over the sea , and up through the clouds , and nobody heard or saw anything of her for a very long while . And this is why they say that no one has ever yet seen a water - baby . For my part , I believe that the naturalists get dozens of them when they are out dredging ; but they say nothing about them , and throw them overboard again , for fear of spoiling their theories . But , you see the professor was found out , as every one is in due time . A very terrible old fairy found the professor out ; she felt his bumps , and cast his nativity , and took the lunars of him carefully inside and out ; and so she knew what he would do as well as if she had seen it in a print book , as they say in the dear old west country ; and he did it ; and so he was found out beforehand , as everybody always is ; and the old fairy will find out the naturalists some day , and put them in the Times , and then on whose side will the laugh be ? So the old fairy took him in hand very severely there and then . But she says she is always most severe with the best people , because there is most chance of curing them , and therefore they are the patients who pay her best ; for she has to work on the same salary as the Emperor of China 's physicians -LRB- it is a pity that all do not -RRB- , no cure , no pay . So she took the poor professor in hand : and because he was not content with things as they are , she filled his head with things as they are not , to try if he would like them better ; and because he did not choose to believe in a water-baby when he saw it , she made him believe in worse things than water-babies -- in unicorns , fire - drakes , manticoras , basilisks , amphisbaenas , griffins , phoenixes , rocs , orcs , dog-headed men , three-headed dogs , three-bodied geryons , and other pleasant creatures , which folks think never existed yet , and which folks hope never will exist , though they know nothing about the matter , and never will ; and these creatures so upset , terrified , flustered , aggravated , confused , astounded , horrified , and totally flabbergasted the poor professor that the doctors said that he was out of his wits for three months ; and perhaps they were right , as they are now and then . So all the doctors in the county were called in to make a report on his case ; and of course every one of them flatly contradicted the other : else what use is there in being men of science ? But at last the majority agreed on a report in the true medical language , one half bad Latin , the other half worse Greek , and the rest what might have been English , if they had only learnt to write it .
And this is the beginning thereof - `` The subanhypaposupernal anastomoses of peritomic diacellurite in the encephalo digital region of the distinguished individual of whose symptomatic phoenomena we had the melancholy honour -LRB- subsequently to a preliminary diagnostic inspection -RRB- XXXXX making an inspectorial diagnosis , presenting the interexclusively quadrilateral and antinomian diathesis known as Bumpsterhausen 's blue follicles , we proceeded '' - But what they proceeded to do My Lady never knew ; for she was so frightened at the long words that she ran for her life , and locked herself into her bedroom , for fear of being squashed by the words and strangled by the sentence .
For So about as because if of off on that