"What have ye the whip for?" said the offspring, undaunted by discovery.
"To bate the dogs with," I replied, attuning my speech to his as best I could.
"Is it the big white dogs?" pursued the offspring.
I paused midway in a mouthful of soda-bread.
"Did you see the white dogs?" I asked very gently.
"God knows I did!" said the offspring, warming to his work, "an' they snapped the bit o' bread out of Joola's hand within in the cow-house! And Joola said they were a fright!"
I sat still and waited while one might count five, fearful of scaring the bird that had perched so near me.
"Are the white dogs here now?" I ventured, wooingly.
"They are not."
The crook of my crop was beginning to prove dangerously engrossing, and the time was short.