making old beasts into new all the year round."

"How does she do that?" asks Tom.

"That's her concern, not mine!" the whale remarks discreetly.

And when Tom came nearer to the white glittering peak it took the form
of something like a lovely woman sitting on a white marble throne. And
from the foot of the throne, you remember, there swam away, out and out
into the sea, millions of new-born creatures of more shapes and colors
than man ever dreamed. And they were Mother Carey's children whom she
makes all day long.

Tom expected,--I am still telling you what happened to the famous water
baby,--Tom expected (like some grown people who ought to know better)
that he would find Mother Carey snipping, piecing, fitting, stitching,
cobbling, basting, filing, planing, hammering, turning, polishing,
moulding, measuring, chiselling, clipping, and so forth, as men do when
they go to work to make anything. But instead of that she sat quite
still with her chin upon her hand, looking down into the sea with two
great blue eyes as blue as the sea itself. (As blue as our own mother's
blue velvet bonnet, Kitty would have said.)

Was Beulah the right place, wondered Mrs. Carey as she dropped asleep.
And all night long she heard in dreams the voice of that shining little
river that ran under the bridge near Beulah village; and all night long
she walked in fields of buttercups and daisies, and saw the June breeze
blow the tall grasses. She entered the yellow painted house and put the
children to bed in the different rooms, and the instant she saw them
sleeping there it became home, and her heart put out little roots that