Dall Glic:  So it is a big matter, and a weighty one.

King:  Not to be left in quiet and all I am after using!  Food that was easy to eat!  Drink that was easy to drink!  That’s the dinner that was a dinner.  That cook now is a wonder!

Dall Glic:  That is now the very one I am wishful to speak about.

King:  I give you my word, I’d sooner have one goose dressed by him than seven dressed by any other one!

Dall Glic:  The Queen that was urging me for to put my mind to make out some way to get quit of him.

King:  Isn’t it a hard thing the very minute I find a lad can dress a dinner to my liking, I must be made an attack on to get quit of him?

Dall Glic:  It is on the head of the Princess Nu.

King:  Tell me this, Dall Glic.  Supposing, now, he was ...in spite of me ...to wed with her ...against my will ...and it might be unknownst to me.

Dall Glic:  Such a thing must not happen.

King:  To be sure, it must not happen.  Why would it happen?  But supposing—­I only said supposing it did.  Would you say would that lad grow too high in himself to go into the kitchen ...it might be only an odd time ...to oblige me ...and dress a dinner the same as he did to-day?

Dall Glic:  I am sure and certain that he would not.  It is the way, it is, with the common sort, the lower orders.  He’d be wishful to sit on a chair at his ease and to leave his hand idle till he’d grow to be bulky and wishful for sleep.

King:  That is a pity, a great pity, and a great loss to the world.  A big misfortune he to have got it in his head to take a liking to the girl.  I tell you he was a great lad behind the saucepans!

Dall Glic:  Since he did get it in his head, it is what we have to do now, to make an end of him.

King:  To gaol him now, and settle up ovens and spits and all sorts in the cell, wouldn’t he, to shorten the day, be apt to start cooking?

Dall Glic:  In my belief he will do nothing at all, but to hold you to the promise you made, and to force you to send away the King of Sorcha.

King:  To have the misfortune of a cook for a son-in-law, and without the good luck of profiting by what he can do in his trade!  That is a hard thing for a father to put up with, let alone a king!

Dall Glic:  If you will but listen to the advice I have to give....

King:  I know it without you telling me.  You are asking me to make away with the lad!  And who knows but the girl might turn on me after, women are so queer, and say I had a right to have asked leave from herself?

Dall Glic:  There will no one suspect you of doing it, and you to take my plan.  Bid them heat the big oven outside on the lawn that is for roasting a bullock in its full bulk.