"I can't fancy it a bit, father.
It's too long.

It makes me puzzled to think of so many years." "Years and years and years and _years_!" said Olly.

"When father's grandfather was a little boy." Mr.Norton laughed.

"Can't you think of anything farther back than that, Olly?
It would take a great many grandfathers, and grandfathers' grandfathers, to get back to the time when the story of Beowulf was made.

And here am I telling it to you just in the same way as fathers used to tell it to their children a thousand years ago." "I suppose the children liked it so, they wouldn't let their fathers forget it," said Milly.