"In words of one syllable: if the boy speaks to you once more, you're to be sentenced to your stateroom."
"How intolerable!" she flashed. "Who on this ship has the right—"
"Nobody. But on shore you possess a stern and rockbound father who, thanks to the malevolent mechanism of an evil genius named Marconi, has been able to exert his authority through the captain, acting in loco parentis, if I may venture to employ a tongue more familiar to this learned court than to myself."
"And that's the reason Mr. Daddleskink," she got it out, with a brave effort, "wouldn't speak to me yesterday?"
"The sole and only reason! Being a minor—"
"Gracious! Isn't he twenty-one?"
"If the court will graciously permit me to conclude my sentence—being a minor, you still—"
"I'm not a minor."
"You're not?"
"Certainly not. I was twenty-one last month."