A Reputed Changeling | Page 4

no; though the thing mourned and
moaned enough to curdle your blood and screeched out when the water
touched him, there he was the same puny little canker. So when madam
was better, and began to fret over the child that was nigh upon three
months old, and no bigger than a newborn babe, Madge up and told her
how it was, and the way to get her own again."
"What was that, nurse?"
"There be different ways, my dear. Madge always held to breaking five
and twenty eggs and have a pot boiling on a good sea-coal fire with the
poker in it red hot, and then drop the shells in one by one, in sight of
the creature in the cradle. Presently it will up and ask whatever you are
about. Then you gets the poker in your hand as you says, "A-brewing
of egg shells." Then it says, "I'm forty hundred years old and odd, and
yet I never heard of a-brewing of egg shells." Then you ups with the

poker and at him to thrust it down his ugly throat, and there's a hissing
and a whirling, and he is snatched away, and the real darling, all plump
and rosy, is put back in the cradle."
"And did they?"
"No, my dears. Madam was that soft-hearted she could not bring her
mind to it, though they promised her not to touch him unless he spoke.
But nigh on two years later, Master Robert was born, as fine and lusty
and straight-limbed as a chrisom could be, while the other could not
walk a step, but sat himself about on the floor, a-moaning and a-fretting
with the legs of him for all the world like the drumsticks of a fowl, and
his hands like claws, and his face wizened up like an old gaffer of a
hundred, or the jackanapes that Martin Boats'n brought from Barbary.
So after a while madam saw the rights of it, and gave consent that
means should be taken as Madge and other wise folk would have it; but
he was too old by that time for the egg shells, for he could talk, talk,
and ask questions enough to drive you wild. So they took him out under
the privet hedge, Madge and her gossip Deborah Clint, and had got his
clothes off to flog him with nettles till they changed him, when the
ill-favoured elf began to squall and shriek like a whole litter of pigs,
and as ill luck would have it, the master was within hearing, though
they had watched him safe off to one of his own 'venticles, but it seems
there had been warning that the justices were on the look-out, so home
he came. And behold, the thing that never knew the use of his feet
before, ups and flies at him, and lays hold of his leg, hollering out, "Sir,
father, don't let them," and what not. So then it was all over with them,
as though that were not proof enow what manner of thing it was!
Madge tried to put him off with washing with yarbs being good for the
limbs, but when he saw that Deb was there, he saith, saith he, as grim
as may be, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," which was hard, for
she is but a white witch; and he stormed and raved at them with Bible
texts, and then he vowed (men are so headstrong, my dears) that if ever
he ketched them at it again, he would see Deb burnt for a witch at the
stake, and Madge hung for the murder of the child, and he is well
known to be a man of his word. So they had to leave him to abide by
his bargain, and a sore handful he has of it."

Anne drew a long sigh and asked whether the real boy in fairyland
would never come back.
"There's no telling, missie dear. Some say they are bound there for ever
and a day, some that they as holds 'em are bound to bring them back for
a night once in seven years, and in the old times if they was sprinkled
with holy water, and crossed, they would stay, but there's no such thing
as holy water now, save among the Papists, and if one knew the way to
cross oneself, it would be as much as one's life was worth."
"If Peregrine was to die," suggested Lucy.
"Bless your heart, dearie, he'll never die! When the true one's time
comes, you'll see, if so be you be alive to see it, as Heaven grant, he
will go off like the flame of a candle and nothing be left in his place but
a bit of a withered