"Hasty pudding in the pot, Pumpkin in the lantern, If you hadn't come from Crocker Neck, You wouldn't be so handsome."
"It doesn't rhyme very well, does it?" Elizabeth said.
"It used to kinder tickle the young folks. We used to have one that we said to the girls:
"The Cape Cod girls they have no combs. They comb their hair with the codfish bones.
I don't know as that rhymes any better, but young folks get up things that don't have much rhyme or reason."
The air was full of the scent of wet feathers. Elizabeth looked up in time to see him lift a dripping fowl from the pail of hot water at his side, and then hastily looked away again.
"Grandfather, what did you do when you were a young man?" she said.
"I went to sea."
"How old were you when you first went?"
"'Long about nine or ten. I started in by going cook."