to lie still--as the best thing left her now to do--this difference
between them was enough to take anybody's notice, facing the
well-established sun.

"Nanny Pegler, get oop wi' ye!" cried a woman even older, but of tougher
constitution. "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. "Na, na; what Frogman here?
Frogmen ha' skinny shanks, and larks' heels, and holes down their bodies
like lamperns. No sign of no frog aboot yon bairn. As fair as a wench,
and as clean as a tyke. A' mought a'most been born to Flaambro'. And
what gowd ha' Crappos got, poor divils?"

This opened the gate for a clamor of discourse; for there surely could
be no denial of her words. And yet while her elder was alive and out of
bed, the habit of the village was to listen to her say, unless any man
of equal age arose to countervail it. But while they were thus divided,
Mrs. Cockscroft came, an