"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 conjurors 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