"Is it aisy broke they are, Grannie?" said Pete. A good spirit looked out of his great boyish face. "Come to your ould daddie, you lil sandpiper. Gough bless me, Kitty, the weight of him, though! This child's a quarter of a hundred, if he's an ounce. He is, I'll go bail he is. Look at him! Guy heng, Grannie, did ye ever see the like, now! It's abs'lute perfection. Kitty, I couldn't have had a better one if I'd chiced it. Where's that Tom Hommy now? The bleating little billygoat, he was bragging outrageous about his new baby—saying he wouldn't part with it for two of the best cows in his cow-house. This'll floor him, I'm thinking. What's that you're saying, Mistress Nancy, ma'am? No good for nothing, am I? You were right, Grannie. 'It'll be all joy soon,' you were saying, and haven't we the child to show for it? I put on my stocking inside out on Monday, ma'am. 'I'm in luck,' says I, and so I was. Look at that, now! He's shaking his lil fist at his father. He is, though. This child knows me. Aw, you're clever, Nancy, but—no nonsense at all, Mistress Nancy, ma'am. Nothing will persuade me but this child knows me."
"Do you hear the man?" said Nancy. "He and he, and he and he! It's a girl, I'm telling you; a girl—a girl—a girl."
"Well, well, a girl, then—a girl we'll make it," said Pete, with determined resignation.
"He's deceaved," said Grannie. "It was a boy he was wanting, poor fellow!"
But Pete scoffed at the idea. "A boy? Never! No, no—a girl for your life. I'm all for girls myself, eh, Kitty? Always was, and now I've got two of them."
The child began to cry, and Grannie took it back and rocked it, face downwards, across her knees.
"Goodness me, the voice at him!" said Pete. "It's a skipper he's born for—a harbor-master, anyway."
The child slept, and Grannie put it on the pillow turned lengthwise at Kate's side.
"Quiet as a Jenny Wren, now," said Pete. "Look at the bogh smiling in his sleep. Just like a baby mermaid on the egg of a dogfish. But where's the ould man at all? Has he seen it? We must have it in the papers. The Times? Yes, and the 'Tiser too. 'The beloved wife of Mr. Capt'n Peter Quilliam, of a boy—a girl,' I mane. Aw, the wonder there'll be all the island over—everybody getting to know. Newspapers are like women—ter'ble bad for keeping sacrets. What'll Philip say?"...
There was a low moaning from the bed.