"I've got into daddy's great coat; he left it behind him."

"Well, thin, I'll put the shawl round me own shoulders, for it's
cowld I am. Are ya hungray, childer?"

"No," said Dick, "but I'm direfully slapy?"

"Slapy, is it? Well, down you get in the bottom of the boat, and
here's the shawl for a pilla. I'll be rowin' again in a minit to keep
meself warm."

He buttoned the top button of the coat.

"I'm a'right," murmured Emmeline in a dreamy voice.

"Shut your eyes tight," replied Mr Button, "or Billy Winker will be
dridgin' sand in them.

`Shoheen, shoheen, shoheen, shoheen,
Sho-hu-lo, sho-hu-lo.
Shoheen, shoheen, shoheen, shoheen,
Hush a by the babby 0.'"

It was the tag of an old nursery folk-song they sing in the hovels
of the Achill coast fixed in his memory, along with the rain and
the wind and the smell of the burning turf, and the grunting of the
pig and the knickety-knock of a rocking cradle.

"She's off," murmured Mr Button to himself, as the form in his