At that moment the plush cat, insecurely balanced; toppled over.
“God bless my soul,” cried the little parrot, “you’re too old, Pinkie.”
“Sheila,” said Quixtus, realising in a frightened way his responsibility. “Come here.”
With perfect docility she rose, and laid a hand on his knee. Bimbo, perceiving himself liberated from the boredom of mountebank duty, twisted himself up and snarled comfortably at fleas in the middle of his back.
“You mustn’t say ‘God bless my soul,’ my dear.”
“Why not? You said it.”
There are instinctive answers in grown-ups, just as instinctive questions in children.
“Old people can say things that little girls mustn’t—just as old people can sit up later than little girls.”
She regarded him with frank seriousness.
“I know. Daddy says ‘damn,’ but I mustn’t. I never say it. Pinkie said it once, and I put her in a dark, dark hole for twenty million years. It wasn’t really twenty million years, you know—it was only ten minutes—but Pinkie thought it was.”