"Shame on ye to lig aboot so.

Be ye browt to bed this toime o' loife ?" "A wonderful foine babby for sich an owd moother," another proceeded with the elegant joke; "and foine swaddles too, wi' solid gowd upon 'em!" "Stan' ivery one o' ye oot o' the way," cried ancient Nanny, now as wide-awake as ever; "Master Robin Cockscroft gie ma t' bairn, an' nawbody sall hev him but Joan Cockscroft." Joan Cockscroft, with a heavy heart, was lingering far behind the rest, thinking of the many merry launches, when her smart young Robin would have been in the boat with his father, and her pretty little Mercy clinging to her hand upon the homeward road, and prattling of the fish to be caught that day; and inasmuch as Joan had not been able to get face to face with her husband on the beach, she had not yet heard of the stranger child.

But soon the women sent a little boy to fetch her, and she came among them, wondering what it could be.

For now a debate of some vigor was arising upon a momentous and exciting point, though not so keen by a hundredth part as it would have been twenty years afterward.

For the eldest old woman had pronounced her decision.
"Tell ye wat, ah dean't think bud wat yon bairn mud he a Frogman." This caused some panic and a general retreat; for though the immortal Napoleon had scarcely finished changing his teeth as yet, a chronic uneasiness about Crappos haunted that coast already, and they might have sent this little boy to pave the way, being capable of almost everything.
"Frogman!" cried the old woman next to her by birth, and believed to have higher parts, though not yet ripe.