"Not since your prize-fightin' days, perhaps, Captain Hunken."
"My prize-fightin' days? My pr—Whoever told you, ma'am, as ever I had any, or behaved so?"
"You had better ask your friend here."
"Hey?"
"Perhaps," said Mrs Bosenna sarcastically, "that goes back beyond your memory! Your parrot, if I may say so, has a better one."
"Missus!" expostulated Dinah modestly, while "Oh good Lord!" muttered Cai with a start. His friend's eye was on him, too, fixed and suspicious.
"The parrot?" 'Bias, albeit innocent, took alarm.
"Why, what has he been doin'?"
"It isn't anything he did, sir," protested Dinah, taking courage to face about again from the oven door. "It's what he said."
"I meant to warn you—" began Cai; but 'Bias beat him down thunderously—