you'll wade
After young water-birds; and you'll get bogged
Setting of eel-traps, and you'll spoil your clothes,
And come home torn and dripping: then, you know,
You'll feel the stick--you'll feel the stick, my lad!

_Enter FRANCES._

_F._ You should not talk so to the blessed babe--
How can you, George? why, he may be in heaven
Before the time you tell of.

_M._ Look at him:
So earnest, such an eager pair of eyes!
He thrives, my dear.

_F._ Yes, that he does, thank God
My children are all strong.

_M._ 'Tis much to say;
Sick children fret their mother's hearts to shreds,
And do no credit to their keep nor care.
Where is your little lass?

_F._ Your daughter came
And begged her of us for a week or so.

_M._ Well, well, she might be wiser, that she might,
For she can sit at ease and pay her way;
A sober husband, too--a cheerful man--
Honest as ever stepped, and fond of her;
Yet she is never easy, never glad,
Because she has not children. Well-a-day!
If she could know how hard her mother worked,
And what ado I had, and what a moil
With my half-dozen! Children, ay, forsooth,
They bring their own love with them when they come,
But if they come not there is peace and rest;
The pretty lambs! and yet she cries for more:
Why the world's full of them, and so is heaven--
They are not rare.

_G._ No, mother, not at all;
But Hannah must not keep our Fanny long--
She spoils her.

_M._ Ah! folks spoil their children now;
When I was a young woman 'twas not so;
We made our children fear us, made them work,
Kept them in order.

_G._ Were not proud of them--
Eh, mother?

_M._ I set store by mine, 'tis true,
But then I had good cause.

_G._ My lad, d'ye hear?
Your Granny was not proud, by no means proud!
She never spoilt your father--no, not she,
Nor ever made him sing at harvest-home,
Nor at the forge, nor at the baker's shop,
Nor to the doctor while she lay abed
Sick, and he crept upstairs to share her broth.

_M._ Well, well, you were my youngest, and, what's more
Your father loved to hear you sing--he did,
Although, good man, he could not tell one tune
From the other.

_F._ No, he got his voice from you:
Do use it, George, and send the child to sleep.

_G._ What must I sing?

_F._ The ballad of the man
That is so shy he cannot speak his mind.

_G._ A