"Nope." Masson's head did not turn. His canoe was leading the expedition. "Heard she was visiting Crayton, but never heard what happened to her."
"Always lecturing about birth control and child psychology," chuckled Ellis. "As uncompromising a spinster as ever I met. Well, that's all changed now. She finds herself with a family of seven young Frogs on her hands."
"Whew!" gasped Masson. "Bet she hates that."
"Oddly enough," the chemistry instructor said, "she's taking to being a mother enthusiastically. Her seven little Frogs will be the neatest, best-scrubbed, insufferable little prigs in all New Crayton—even old Joe Hansel, the ex-town drunkard. He's her next-to-the youngest son."
Masson shook his hairless gray head thoughtfully. The mystery of the switching of his neighbors' and friends' egos with the former inhabitants of these tough gray bodies never ceased to amaze him. The former sex of their transferred intelligences had been preserved, but not their age.
"Something like Cunningham, the campus heart-breaker," he said. "Only he ended up an old, hideously wrinkled Frog."
"And a good end for him," cried Ellis warmly, "he was...."
"Ssst," warned Masson peering along a steaming tunnel of vision that a chance breath of moist air had opened. "A raft, and half a dozen Frogs!"
They relayed the word back to the seven smaller craft and four of them swiftly drew abreast of the canoe of Masson and Ellis. The other three canoes remained to guard the cargo boats with their three paddlers.
"We'll investigate," ordered Masson softly. "Unless they attack, do not harm them. With the few words of their language we have learned perhaps we can find where the rocky island is located."