But, she was here interrupted by her father’s voice exclaiming angrily, “Now, Poll Parrot!” and by her father’s hat being heavily flung from his hand and striking her face. Accustomed to such occasional manifestations of his sense of parental duty, Pleasant merely wiped her face on her hair (which of course had tumbled down) before she twisted it up. This was another common procedure on the part of the ladies of the Hole, when heated by verbal or fistic altercation.

“Blest if I believe such a Poll Parrot as you was ever learned to speak!” growled Mr. Riderhood, stooping to pick up his hat, and making a feint at her with his head and right elbow; for he took the delicate subject of robbing seamen in extraordinary dudgeon, and was out of humour too. “What are you Poll Parroting at now? Ain’t you got nothing to do but fold your arms and stand a Poll Parroting all night?”

“Let her alone,” urged the man. “She was only speaking to me.”