My armour took to hurting me. You will hardly believe me. We all know that new clothes hurt sometimes, but old ones!
It grew tighter and tighter. I wriggled about, feeling miserable. Oh, if only I could get out of this!
At last I grew desperate. This choked, tight feeling was too much. I gave a tremendous struggle, and shook myself; crickle, crackle went my old armour, off it came, and out I stepped.
But, oh, so tender, and so nervous! The shrimps pranced round and knocked up against me, pricking and tormenting till I could have screamed.
I crept behind a stone and looked at my old armour half sadly. It looked just like old me, only so still, and rather as if I had been out in the rain all night and had shrunk.
Then I glanced at the new me. Well, I was a pretty fellow—not blue-black any longer, but a reddish pink of lovely hue.
Some one else took pride in my appearance, for I heard again a voice say, “Look at my lobster; he has cast his shell.”
I hadn’t, you know—it was the shell that had cast me; but these men can’t know everything.
The man touched me, but he hurt me almost as much as the shrimps, and I shrank farther still behind the stone out of his way. There I quietly lay for some days, till one morning, feeling braver and ever so much bigger, I stepped out for an early saunter.
That moment came a voice, “Oh, here is my lobster! How he has grown, more than half as big again!” Down came the hand as before; and just to show him I was also half as strong again, I gave him a nip.