Every hour or so Mr Button would shake his lethargy off, and rise
and look round for "seagulls," but the prospect was sail-less as
the prehistoric sea, wingless, voiceless. When Dick would fret
now and then, the old sailor would always devise some means of
amusing him. He made him fishing tackle out of a bent pin and
some small twine that happened to be in the boat, and told him to
fish for "pinkeens"; and Dick, with the pathetic faith of childhood,
fished.

Then he told them things. He had spent a year at Deal long ago,
where a cousin of his was married to a boatman.

Mr Button had put in a year as a longshoreman at Deal, and he had
got a great lot to tell of his cousin and her husband, and more
especially of one, Hannah; Hannah was his cousin's baby--a most
marvellous child, who was born with its "buck" teeth fully
developed, and whose first unnatural act on entering the world
was to make a snap at the "docther." "Hung on to his fist like a
bull-dog, and him bawlin' `Murther!'"

"Mrs James," said Emmeline, referring to a Boston acquaintance,
"had a little baby, and it was pink."

"Ay, ay," said Paddy; "they're mostly pink to start with, but they
fade whin they're washed."

"It'd no teeth," said Emmeline, "for I put my finger in to see."

"The doctor brought it in a bag," put in Dick, who was still
steadily fishing--"dug it out of a cabbage patch; an' I got a trow'l