Bedtime Tale: The Water Babies Ch 1/Part 2

Enjoy this bedtime tale to help you drift off into a peaceful slumber. Tonight we read Chapter 1/Part 2 of the classic, The Water Babies, by Charles Kingsley. This reading describes Tom accidentally causing mischief while on a job. This audio is perfect for children or adults who want to relax, discover magic, or find adventure before a great night's sleep.

Transcript

The Water Babies A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby by Charles Kingsley Chapter 1,

Part 2 And now they had gone three miles and more and came to Sir John's Lodge Gates Very grand lodges they were with very grand iron gates and stone gate posts And on the top of each a most dreadful bogey all teeth horns and tail which was the crest which Sir John's ancestors wore in the Wars of the Roses and Very prudent men they were to wear it for all their enemies must have run for their lives at the very first sight of them Grimes rang at the gate and out came a keeper on the spot and opened I was told to expect thee he said now thou be so good as to keep to the main Avenue and Not let me find a hare or a rabbit on thee when thou comes back.

I shall look sharp for one I tell thee Not if it's in the bottom of the suit bag quote Grimes and at that he laughed and the keeper laughed and said if That's thy sort.

I may as well walk up with thee to the hall.

I think thou best had it's thy business to see after thy game man and not mine So the keeper went with them and a Tom surprise he and Grimes chatted together all the way quite pleasantly He did not know that a keeper is only a poacher turned outside in and a poacher a keeper turned inside out They walked up a great lime Avenue a full mile long And between their stems Tom peeped trembling at the horns of the sleeping deer which stood up among the ferns Tom had never seen such enormous trees and as he looked up he fancied that the blue sky rested on their heads But he was puzzled very much by a strange murmuring noise which followed them all the way So much puzzled that at last he took courage to ask the keeper what it was He spoke very civilly and called him sir for he was horribly afraid of him,

Which pleased the keeper And he told him that there were the bees about the lime flowers What are bees asked Tom?

What make honey?

What is honey asked Tom?

Thou hold thy noise said Grimes Let the boy be said the keeper he's a civil young chap now and that's more than he'll be long if he bides with thee Grimes laughed for he took that as a compliment.

I Wish I were a keeper said Tom to live in such a beautiful place and wear green Velveteens and have a real dog whistle at my button like you The keeper laughed he was a kind-hearted fellow enough Let well alone lad and ill too at times Thy life safer than mine at all events a mr.

Grimes and Grimes laughed again,

And then the two men began talking quite low Tom could hear though that it was about some poaching fight and at last Grimes said sir Lily Has thou anything against me not now?

Then don't ask me any questions till thou hast for I am a man of honor And at that they both laughed again and thought it a very good joke and by this time they were come up to the great iron gates in front of the house and Tom stared through them at the rhodendrons and azaleas which were all in flower and then at the house itself and Wondered how many chimneys were in it and how long ago it was built and What was the man's name that built it and whether he got much money for his job?

These last were very difficult questions to answer for hearth over had been built at 90 different times and in 19 different styles and Looked as if somebody had built a whole street of houses of every imaginable shape And then stirred them together with a spoon For the attics were anglo-saxon the third floor Norman the second Cinquecento the first floor Elizabethan the right wing pure Doric the center early English was a huge portico copied from the Parthenon the left wing pure voracious Which the country folk admired most of all because it was just like the new barracks in the town only three times as big The grand staircase was copied from the catacombs at Rome the back staircase from the Taj Mahal at Agra This was built by Sir John's great great great uncle who won in Lord Clive's Indian Wars plenty of money plenty of wounds and no more taste than his betters the cellars were copied from the caves of Elephanta the offices from the pavilion of Brighton and The rest from nothing in heaven or earth or under the earth So that hearth over house was a great puzzle to antiquarians and a thorough no bots vineyard to critics and Architects and all persons who like meddling with other men's business and spending other men's money So they were all setting upon poor Sir John year after year and trying to talk him into spending a hundred thousand pounds or so in Building to please them and not himself But he always put them off like a canny North countryman as he was One wanted him to build a gothic house,

But he said he was no goth and another to build in Elizabethan but he said he lived under a good Queen Victoria and not good Queen Bess and Another was bold enough to tell him that his house was ugly But he said he lived inside it and not outside and another that there was no unity in it But he said that that was just why he liked the old place For he liked to see how each Sir John and Sir Hugh and Sir Ralph and Sir Randall had left his mark upon the place each after his own taste and he had no more notion of disturbing his ancestors work than of disturbing their graves For now the house looked like a real live house That had history and had grown and grown as the world grew And that it was only an upstart fellow who did not know who his own grandfather was Who would change it for some speck and span new gothic or Elizabethan thing?

Which looked as if it had been all spawned in a night as?

Mushrooms are From which you may collect if you have enough wit that Sir John was a very sound-headed Sound-hearted squire and just the man to keep the countryside in order and show good sport with his hounds But Tom and his master did not go in through the great iron gates as if they had been Dukes or bishops But round the back way and a very long way round it was and into a little back door where the ash boy let them in yawning horribly and Then in a passage the housekeeper met them in such a flowered chintz dressing-gown that Tom mistook her for My lady herself,

And she gave Grimes solemn orders about you will take care of this and take care of that as if he was going up the chimneys and not Tom and Grimes listened and said every now and then under his voice You'll mind that you little beggar and Tom did mind all at least that he could and then the housekeeper turned them into a grand room all covered up in sheets of brown paper and Bade them begin in a lofty and tremendous voice and So after a whimper or two and a kick from the master into the great Tom went and up the chimney While a houseman stayed in the room to watch the furniture to whom mr.

Grimes paid many playful and chivalrous compliments,

But met with very slight encouragement in return How many chimneys Tom swept I cannot say but he swept so many that he got quite tired and puzzled too For they were not like the town flues to which he was a custom But such as you would find if you would only get up them and look Which perhaps that you would not like to do in old country houses Large and crooked chimneys which had been altered again and again till they ran into one another So Tom fairly lost his way in them not that he cared much for that though he was in pitchy darkness For he was as much at home in a chimney as a mole is underground But at last coming down as He thought the right chimney He came down the wrong one and found himself standing on the hearth rug in a room the like of which he had never seen before Tom had never seen the like he had never been in a gentle folks room but when the carpets were all up and the curtains down and the furniture huddled together under a cloth and the pictures covered with aprons and dusters and he had often enough wondered what the rooms were like when they were all ready for the quality to sit in and Now he saw and he thought the site very pretty The room was all dressed in white white window curtains white bed curtains White furniture and white walls with just a few lines of pink here and there The carpet was all over gay little flowers and the walls were hung with pictures and guilt frames Which amused Tom very much There were pictures of ladies and gentlemen and pictures of horses and dogs The horses he liked but the dogs he did not care for much For there were no bulldogs among them not even a terrier But the two pictures which took his fancy most Were one with a man in long garments with little children and their mothers around him Who was lying his hand upon the children's heads?

That was a very pretty picture Tom thought to hang in a ladies room For he could see that he was in a ladies room by the dresses which lay about The other picture was that of a man nailed to a cross which surprised Tom much He fancied that he had seen something like it in a shop window But why was it there?

Poor man thought Tom and he looked so kind and quiet But why should the lady have such a sad picture as that in her room?

Perhaps it was some kinsmen's of hers who had been murdered by the savages and foreign parts and she kept it there for a remembrance And Tom felt sad and odd and turned to look at something else The next thing he saw and that too puzzled him was a washing stand With ewers and basins and soap and brushes and towels and a large bath full of clean water What a heap of things all for washing She must be a very dirty lady thought Tom By my master's rule to want as much scrubbing as all that But she must be very cunning to put the dirt out of the way so well afterwards for I don't see a speck about the room not even on the very towels and Then looking toward the bed.

He saw that dirty lady and held his breath with astonishment Upon the snow-white coverlet Upon the snow-white pillow Lay the most beautiful little girl that Tom had ever seen Her cheeks were almost as white as the pillow and her hair was like threads of gold spread all about her above the bed She might have been as old as Tom Or maybe a year or two older But Tom did not think of that He thought only of her delicate skin and golden hair and Wondered whether she was a real live person or one of the wax dolls he had seen in the shops But when he saw her breathe He made up his mind that she was alive and stood staring at her as if she'd been an angel out of heaven No She cannot be dirty.

She never could have been dirty thought Tom to himself and then he thought And are all people like that when they're washed?

And he looked at his own wrist and tried to rub the suit off and wondered whether it ever would come off certainly,

I should look much prettier than if I grew at all like her and Looking round he suddenly saw standing close to him a little ugly black ragged figure With bleary eyes and grinning white teeth He turned on it angrily What did such a little black ape want in that sweet young lady's room and behold it was himself reflected in a great mirror the like of which Tom had never seen before and Tom for the first time in his life found out that he was dirty and burst into tears with shame and anger and turned to sneak up the chimney again and hide and Upset the fender and threw the fire and irons down with the noise of 10,

000 tin kettles tied to 10,

000 Mad Dog's tails up jumped the little white lady in her bed and seeing Tom screamed as shrill as any peacock and Rushed a stout old nurse from the next room and seeing Tom likewise made up her mind that he had come to rob plunder destroy and burn and Dashed at him as he lay over the fender so fast that she caught him by the jacket But she did not hold him Tom had been in a policeman's hands many a time and out of them,

Too What is more and he would have been ashamed to face his friends forever if he'd been stupid enough to be caught by an old woman So he doubled under the good lady's arm across the room and out of the window in a moment He did not need to drop out though.

He would have done so bravely enough Nor even to let himself down a spout Which would have been an old game to him for once he got up by a spout to a church roof he said to take jacked odds eggs,

But the policeman said to steal dead and When he was seen on high sat there till the Sun got too hot and came down by another spout Leaving the policeman to go back to the station house and eat their dinners but all under the windows spread a tree with great leaves and Sweet white flowers almost as big as his head It was Magnolia,

I suppose but Tom knew nothing about that and cared less for down the tree he went like a cat and Across the garden lawn and over the iron railings and up the park towards the wood Leaving the old nurse to scream murder and fire at the window The under gardener mowing saw Tom and threw down his scythe caught his leg in it and cut his shin open Whereby he kept in a bed for a week,

But in his hurry,

He never knew it and gave chase to poor Tom The dairymaid heard the noise got the churn between her knees Tumbled over it spilling all the cream and yet she jumped up and gave chase to Tom a Groom cleaning sir John's hack at the stables.

Let him go loose Whereby he kicked himself lame in five minutes,

But he ran out and gave chase to Tom Grimes upset the soot sack in the new graveled yard and spoiled it all utterly,

But he ran out and gave chase to Tom The old steward opened the park gate in such a hurry that he hung up his ponies chin upon the spikes and For odd,

I know it hangs there still But he jumped off and gave chase to Tom the plowman left his horses at the headland and One jumped over the fence and pulled the other into the ditch plow and all But he ran on and gave chase to Tom The keeper who is taking a stoat out of a trap let the stoke go and caught his own finger but he jumped up and ran after Tom and Considering what he said and how he looked I should have been sorry for Tom if he'd been caught Sir John looked out of his study window for he was an early old gentleman and up at the nurse and A Martin dropped mud in his eye so that he had at last to send for the doctor And yet he ran out and gave chase to Tom The Irishman too was walking up to the house to beg She must have got round by some byway But she threw away her bundle and gave chase to Tom likewise Only my lady did not give chase for when she had put her head out the window her night wig fell into the garden and she had to ring up her Ladysmaid and send her down for it privately which quite put her out of the running so that she came in nowhere and is consequently not placed In a word never was there heard at Hall place Not even when the Fox was killed in the conservatory among acres of broken glass and tons of smashed flower pots such a noise row hubbub Babble shindy hullabaloo stromish and Total contempt of dignity repose and order as that day when Grimes Gardner the groom the dairymaid Sir John the Steward the plowman the keeper and the Irish woman all ran up the park shouting Stop thief and the belief that Tom had at least a thousand pounds worth of jewels in his empty pockets and The very magpies and Jays followed Tom up Screeching and screaming as if he were a hunted fox beginning to droop his brush and All the while poor Tom paddled up the park with his little bare feet like a small black gorilla fleeing to the forest a Lass for him There was no big father gorilla therein to take part to scratch out the gardener's inside with one paw Toss the dairymaid into the tree with another and wrench off Sir John's head with a thud While he cracked the keepers skull with his teeth as easily as if he'd been a coconut or a paving stone However,

Tom did not remember ever having a father so he did not look for one and Expected to have to take care of himself while as for his running he could keep up for quite a number of miles with any stagecoach if there was any chance of a copper or cigar end and Turn coach wheels on his hands and feet ten times following which is more than you can do Wherefore his pursuers found it very difficult to catch him and we will hope that they did not catch him at all Tom of course made for the woods He had never been in a wood in his life but he was sharp enough to know that it might hide in a brush or swarm up in a tree and Altogether had more chance there than in the open if he had not known that he would have been foolisher than a mouse or a minnow But when he got into the wood,

He found it a very different sort of place from what he had fancied He pushed into a thick cover of rhodenodrons and found himself at once caught in a trap The boughs laid hold of his legs and arms Poked him in his face in his stomach Made him shut his eyes tight Though there was no great loss for he could not see it best a yard before his nose and when he got through the rhodenodrons the Hassett grass and Sedges tumbled him over and cut his poor little fingers afterwards most spitefully the birches birched him as soundly as if they'd been a nobleman at eaten and over the face too which is not fair swishing as all brave boys will agree and The lawyers tripped him up and tore his shins as if they'd been sharks teeth,

Which lawyers are likely enough to have I Must get out of this thought Tom or I shall stay here till somebody comes to help me Which is just what I don't want But how to get out of this difficult matter and Indeed,

I don't think he ever would have got out at all But have stayed there till the cock Robins covered him with leaves if he had not suddenly run his head against a wall Now running your head against a wall is not pleasant especially if it's a loose wall with the stones all set on edge and a sharp cornered one hits you between the eyes and Makes you see all a matter of beautiful stars The stars are very beautiful certainly,

But fortunately they go in the 20,

000th part of a split second and the pain which comes after them does not and so Tom hurt his head But he was a brave boy and did not mind that a penny He guessed that over the wall the cover would end and up he went and over like a squirrel and That is the end of our story this evening until next time Sweet dreams

Reviews

5.30 in the morning and the clocks went back so I’m totally out of sink. Didn’t fall asleep for the first time . Will listen to next chapter. Thanks Hilary. 🙏🏼❤️