"Blow my dickey!" said Mr. Fogo, "that’s the first knock-down for you anyway. A woman--a woman in the P.R.! You really thought that? That’s the best joke I’ve heard since ’45." "It’s settled," said David, calmly. "A woman in the P.R.!" repeated Fogo. "Well, I’ve seen most things during the last seventy years, but not that. Why don’t you ax your sister to fight for you?" "Look here," said the elder Bowden, "I won’t have nothing said in this matter by you or anybody, Mr. Fogo, till you see for yourselves. Anyway it’s going to happen." "I quite agree!" declared Mr. Snell, suddenly. "Miss Rhoda’s a born wonder and a most renowned creature for courage. None ever was like her. A female no more feared to look on blood than we be to count our wages. And as to picking him up, she could pick him up--and you too, Mr. Fogo, as easily as I can turn a stop-cock." "Can such things be?" asked Mr. Fogo. "This bangs Bannagher! A woman--a young, female woman inside the P.R.! ’Tis enough to provoke the anger of Heaven. May I die like a trundle-tailed cur, with a brick round my neck, if I could ever stand it!" "’Tis my girl that you saw up to the Warren House," said Mr. Bowden, "her you said was a very fine woman, and you wished you’d got such a pair of arms." "Her with the chin?" "She have a chin, I grant you." "And who haven’t?" asked Mr. Snell. "You must know ’tisn’t a common case," explained David. "My sister and me be very close friends, and she’s terrible interested in this fight, and, in short, she’ll have to be there--there’s no law against it." "I’m shocked," said the old man. "’Tis a very indecent, outrageous thing, and I protest with all my might. A petticoat in the P.R.! Can’t everybody in this bar see it’s all wrong and disgraceful and disorderly?" "In a general way it would be," admitted Shillabeer; "but she ain’t no common young woman, ’Frosty,’ and I’m not surprised to hear she means it. She was axing me what a bottle-holder be expected to do a bit back-along; and I half twigged that she’d got this idea in her noddle." "Then it’s the end of the world," declared Mr. Fogo. "I ask for nothing more. Perhaps our man wants his mother in his corner--also his aunt? I’m sure they very much wish to be there by all accounts." "Since the fight be in part about my sister, she’s a right on the spot," said David; "and this I’ll tell you, Mr. Fogo: though you laugh, you’ll see what she’s like in the Ring; and if she does one thing--one single thing--she shouldn’t, and fails of aught where a man could do better, then I’ll give you the stakes if I win ’em."