The butcher weighed the infant eleven times. He was a man of few words,
and he soon got through with them. The first time he said, "E's a good
un;" the next time he said, "My word!" the third time he said, "_Well_,
mum," and after that he simply blew enormously each time, scratched his
head, and looked at his scales with an unprecedented mistrust. Every one
came to see the Big Baby--so it was called by universal consent--and
most of them said, "E's a Bouncer," and almost all remarked to him,
"_Did_ they?" Miss Fletcher came and said she "never _did_," which was
perfectly true.

Lady Wondershoot, the village tyrant, arrived the day after the third
weighing, and inspected the phenomenon narrowly through glasses that
filled it with howling terror. "It's an unusually Big child," she told
its mother, in a loud instructive voice. "You ought to take unusual care
of it, Caddles. Of course it won't go on like this, being bottle fed,
but we must do what we can for it. I'll send you down some more
flannel."

The doctor came and measured the child with a tape, and put the figures
in a notebook, and old Mr. Drift-hassock, who fanned by Up Marden,
brought a manure traveller two miles out of their way to look at it. The
traveller asked the child's age three times over, and said finally that
he was blowed. He left it to be inferred how and why he was blowed;
apparently it was the child's size blowed him. He also said it ought to
be put into a baby show. And all day long, out of school hours, little
children kept coming and saying, "Please, Mrs. Caddles, mum, may we have
a look at your baby, please, mum?" until Mrs. Caddles had to put a stop
to it. And amidst all these scenes of amazement came Mrs. Skinner, and
stood and smiled, standing somewhat in the background, with each sharp
elbow in a lank gnarled hand, and smiling, smiling under and about her