r wife?"

"Oh! she is a very plain stupid creature, and that's the truth; and
thinks about nothing but eggs. If she chooses to come, why she may; and
if not, why I go without her;--and here I go."

And, as he spoke, he turned quite pale, and then quite white.

"Why, you're ill!" said Tom. But he did not answer.

"You're dead," said Tom, looking at him as he stood on his knee as white
as a ghost.

"No, I ain't!" answered a little squeaking voice over his head. "This is
me up here, in my ball-dress; and that's my skin. Ha, ha! you could not
do such a trick as that!"

And no more Tom could, nor Houdin, nor Robin, nor Frikell, nor all the
conjurers in the world. For the little rogue had jumped clean out of his
own skin, and left it standing on Tom's knee, eyes, wings, legs, tail,
exactly as if it had been alive.

"Ha, ha!" he said, and he jerked and skipped up and down, never stopping
an instant, just as if he had St. Vitus's dance. "Ain't I a pretty
fellow now?"

And so he was; for his body was white, and his tail orange, and his eyes
all the colours of a peacock's tail. And what was the oddest of all, the
whisks at the end of his tail had grown five times as long as they were
before.

"Ah!" said he, "now I will see the gay world. My living won't cost me
much, for I have no mouth, you see, and no inside; so I can never be
hungry nor have the stomach-ache neither."

No more he had. He had grown as dry and hard and empty as a quill, as
such silly shallow-hearted fellows deserve to grow.

But, instead of being ashamed of his emptiness, he was quite proud of
it, as a good many fine gentlemen are, and began flirting and flipping
up and down, and singing--

"_My wife shall dance, and I shall sing,
So merrily pass the day;
For I hold it for quite the wisest thing,
To drive dull care away._"

And he danced up and down for three days and three nights, till he grew
so tired, that he tumbled into the water, and floated down. But what
became of him Tom never knew, and he himself never minded; for Tom heard
him singing to the last, as he floated down--

"_To drive dull care away-ay-ay!_"

And if he did not care, why nobody else cared either.

But one day Tom had a new adventure. He was sitting on a water-lily
leaf, he and his friend the dragon-fly, watching the gnats dance. The
dragon-fly had eaten as many as he wanted, and was sitting quite still
and sle