e
nearly abreast of its door, issued a little child; not old enough to
walk with particular firmness, but old enough for mischief; a laughing
expression of which it bore upon its features. It was clearly in the
act of absconding from home, and was hurrying earnestly to a turn of
the road which it counted upon making available for concealment. But,
before it could reach this point, a young woman, of remarkable beauty,
perhaps twenty years old, ran out in some alarm, which was not
diminished by hearing the sound of carriage-wheels rapidly coming up
from a distance of probably two furlongs. The little rosy thing
stopped and turned on hearing its mother's voice, but hesitated a
little, until she made a gesture of withdrawing her handkerchief from
her bosom, and said, coaxingly, 'Come its ways, then, and get its
_patten_.' Until that reconciling word was uttered, there had been a
shadow of distrust on the baby's face, as if treachery might be in the
wind. But the magic of that one word _patten_ wrought an instant
revolution. Back the little truant ran, and the young mother's manner
made it evident that she would not on _her_ part forget what had
passed between the high contracting parties.[51] What, then, could be
the meaning of this talismanic word _patten_? Accidentally, having
had a naval brother confined amongst the Danes, as a prisoner of war,
for eighteen months, I knew that it meant the female bosom. Soon after
I stumbled upon the meaning of the Danish word _Skyandren_--namely,
what in street phrase amongst ourselves is called giving to any person
a _blowing-up_. This was too remarkable a word, too bristling with
harsh blustering consonants, to baffle the detecting ear, as it might
have done under any masquerading _aura-textilis_, or woven air of
vowels and diphthongs.

[Footnote 51: It might seem odd to many people that a child able to
run alone should not have been already weaned, a process of early
misery that, in modern improved practice, takes place amongst opulent
families at the age of six months; and, secondly, it might seem
equally odd that, until weaned, any infant could be truly described as
'rosy.' I wish, however, always to be punctiliously accurate; and I
can assure my readers that, generally speaking, the wives of labouring
men (for more reasons than one) suckle their infants for three years,
to the great indignation of medical practitioners, who denounce the
practice as six times too long. Secondly, a