"Take a bite out of Grater?" Coal suggested sarcastically. "You can't bite anything that hasn't a smell!"
"Why can't you?" Hortense inquired sharply.
"Because if it hasn't any smell it hasn't any taste, and how can you bite a thing if you can't taste it?"
"You mean, how can you taste it if you don't bite it," said Hortense.
"I mean what I say," said Coal.
"How doggedly he speaks," said Lowboy, who burst into loud laughter. Nobody else laughed, and Lowboy explained his joke. "Dog, doggedly, see?"
"It's a poor joke," said White Owl, flying down the stairs.
"Make a better one then," said Lowboy.
"I never joke," said Owl. "None of our family ever did."
"So that's what's the matter with them all," said Lowboy. "I always wondered—or should I say I owlways wondered?"