_Nosebag._ (_With paper._) The King of the French seems giving away
crosses like winkin’!
_Tickle._ Hardly surprised at that. If things don’t take a turn,
shouldn’t wonder if he hasn’t a good many to spare. Hasn’t sent you
anything, eh, Nutts?
_Nutts._ Not yet; though I’ve kept a sharp eye for the Parcels Delivery
all the week. Considerin’ what a shower of crosses and snuff-boxes is
coming down, I don’t well see how a man’s to miss one of ’em.
_Slowgoe._ A great man Louis Philippe! He didn’t come at the crown,
certainly, in the reg’lar way; but I’m beginning to be reconciled to
him, he’s getting so like the Emperor of Rushy and the rest of ’em.
Talking about crosses, Mr Nutts, how should you like Louis Philippe’s
pictur?
_Nutts._ Why, that would entirely depend upon the di’monds. I must say
I shouldn’t value it much myself, if the pawnbroker didn’t.
_Slowgoe._ Pawn a crowned head, Mr Nutts! But it’s like your levelling
ways.
_Nutts._ Why, it isn’t often we _can_ turn kings to profit, and one
shouldn’t miss a chance. Besides, when the war once began, I should
pawn the enemy’s pictur on principle.
_Slowgoe._ Pooh! There’ll be no war. Things look a little black at
present, but Louis Philippe’s a great man: he’ll smile it all clear
again.
_Tickle._ They do say he can’t get a bit o’ sleep o’ nights for
thinking of the noise in Shee’ness Dockyard: when they’re doing nothing
but calking a whole squadron.
_Slowgoe._ What for?
_Tickle._ Why, in case anything happens, I suppose, to take the Queen
of England’s kindest regards to the French Fleet. And they do say, that
when the war breaks out, Admiral Joinville has taken a private oath
to captur the _Victoria and Albert_, with the Queen and the Prince,
and little Wales, and all the royal babbies, and Sir Jeames Clark and
Doctor Locock, and the whole of the crew.
_Nutts._ Well, I don’t know, for the babbies’ sake, if I should be
sorry for it.
_Slowgoe._ Why, you traitorous--rebellious!--Mr Peabody, as a
policeman, can you bear this?
_Peabody._ Yes: anything; I’m not on duty.
_Nutts._ Hear me out. Sometimes when I wake o’ nights my heart bleeds
for them babbies. Haven’t you all read what Sir Frederick Trench says,
that in Buckin’ham Palace the royal children have such small bedrooms
that they’re like the little princes smothered in the Tower? Now, if
they was to be taken just for two or three years to France, while the
new palace was building, they wouldn’t, as it’s now very likely, be
stopt in their growth. Only think of a Prince of Wales with not room
enough to stretch himself! Now, the King of the French, I’ve no doubt
on it, would give ’em all nice roomy quarters at Yow.
_Peabody._ Beg your pardon, Mr Nutts; but--Eu! It’s difficult, I know;
but--Eu!
_Nightflit._ It’s all very well; but if once Louis Philippe caught hold
o’ them babbies, he’d never let ’em go till he’d married every one on
’em to his grandsons and granddaughters. But there won’t be no war.
_Slowgoe._ (_With paper._) I think not; nevertheless, I see our
’Bassador, Lord Normandy----
_Nosebag._ A noble gen’l’man that!
_Slowgoe._ Humph! For a Whig. I see the _Réforme_--how I hate that
word!--a French paper, says, “Considerable bets were made yesterday at
the Jockey Club that Lord Normandy would have a fit of gout, by order
of his Government, at the period of the feasts which are to be given
at Versailles on the arrival of the Duchess of Montpensier. Those bets
exceed 2000 louis.” Ha! what we call perlitical gout.
_Nutts._ Well, considering the lots o’ children in the palace, I
wouldn’t have gout, if I was his Lordship: no, to make it quite safe,
I’d have nothing less than measles.
_Tickle._ (_With paper._) His Lordship may remain in health; for
another paper, I see, says this: “We announced that a grand theatrical
representation was to take place at Versailles on the occasion of the
marriage of the Duke de Montpensier; but the King, deeply touched
with disasters which have fallen on several of the departments, has
countermanded all kinds of rejoicing.” Poor little Duchess! Her
honeymoon hasn’t begun so pleasant, has it? To be sure, she’s seen
a few bulls killed, and, as the accounts say, “the usual number” of
horses gored and slaughtered.
_Nutts._ More than that. I was reading that one of the men that fought
the bulls has since died of his wounds.
_Peabody._ Well, I’m not superstitious myself; but the Greeks and the
Romans wouldn’t have foretold much of a marriage so soon followed by
death and a deluge. I must say, I _do_ prophesy a war.
_Nutts._ Why, there’s no doubt on it. One of our Ministers has wrote a
confidential letter to another advising him to send to Manchester, to
order I don’t know how many tons of gun-cotton; for powder, you know,
is exploded.
_Slowgoe_. How do you know this, if the letter was confidential?
_Nutts._ I know it from his Lordship’s footman, who found the letter
in his master’s letter-basket; that footman has a good eye for a
penn’orth, and--but let this be between us--that private letter will
appear to-morrow in the _Morning Post_! I tell you, tons of gun-cotton.
_Mrs Nutts._ What is all this about gun-cotton? Cotton going off and
blowing up! Well, as I was saying to Mrs Biggleswade over the way, it’s
enough to frighten a woman from ever taking a needle-and-thread in her
hand. I don’t know how it is; but now, somehow, I do dread to go near
my cotton-box.
_Slowgoe._ That’s not a new complaint with Mrs Slowgoe, by any means.
_Tickle._ A very fine invention this gun-cotton, no doubt; but it gives
a dreadful power to husbands: no woman’s safe.
_Mrs Nutts._ Bless my soul, Mr Tickle! Not that I’ve any fear of
Nutts, but do tell me what you mean. How do they make the gun-cotton go
off?
_Tickle._ That’s it. You take the cotton and you steeps it in what they
call a sirlution of hydrogin and hogsesgin and creamovallygin.
_Mrs Nutts._ Dreadful!
_Tickle._ And then you dry it; and then it’s prepared. One woman’s
blow’d to bits already, and the police is after her husband. I see you
haven’t heard about it. Certainly it has been strangely kept out o’ the
newspapers.
_Mrs Nutts._ Ha! that’s because only men write for the newspapers, Mr
Tickle. If it had been the other way; yes, if a poor woman had only
killed her husband, we should never have heard the last of it. But
of course a wife’s nothing. Go on, Mr Tickle--I’ve made the pudding,
Mr Nutts; you needn’t be looking knives and forks at me in that
manner.--Go on: the poor soul was blown to bits?
_Tickle._ You see, she would go to the play; and because she’d go, her
husband wouldn’t.
_Mrs Nutts._ Just like the whole sect: go on.
_Tickle._ Well, it is supposed from what followed that her husband went
unbeknown to her drawers, and----
_Mrs Nutts._ What! She never kept ’em locked? Well, perhaps it’s
wrong for one woman to say it of another; but after that, whatever she
suffered, it served her right. Not lock her drawers! Well, I have been
married to Nutts these seventeen years, and----
_Nutts._ And I’m as well as could be expected after it. Proceed, Mr
Tickle.
_Tickle._ Went unbeknown to her drawers, and got the poor woman’s
cotton gown, and steeped it in all the gins I’ve said: and squeezed
it; and dried it; and put it back again. Well, the poor soul dressed
herself, thinking nothing of the villany of her husband----
_Mrs Nutts._ Jest like us; and fools we are for our pains.
_Tickle._ And went away to go to the Surr’y pit. Mr Macready, the
imminent tragedian, was to play, and there was a precious squeezing,
you may be sure. Well, the doomed ’oman, with the gun-cotton gown upon
her----
_Mrs Nutts._ Dear soul! But she ought to have locked her drawers.
_Tickle._ With the gun-cotton gown upon her, was standing in the middle
of the crowd. Well, when the doors was opened there was a general rush
and crush--a bang was heard--the people screamed--the cotton gown had
exploded----
_Mrs Nutts._ And the dear woman?
_Tickle._ A little white smoke went slowly over the heads o’ the mob,
and that was all that was ever seen of her.
_Mrs Nutts._ Well, what’s gone can’t be brought back; but it’s a
blessed comfort to think of, they’ll hang the husband when they catch
him.
_Peabody._ They can’t, ma’am. By the law of England, Mrs Nutts, they
can do nothing to the man.
_Mrs Nutts._ To be sure, not. I’d forgot. He’s only killed his wife;
and what’s a wife? Men make laws, of course; and when they make ’em,
don’t they take care o’ themselves? However, we shall have our turn.
Yes, yes! the world--as I said to Mrs Biggleswade over the way--the
world is going on, and must take us women with it. Of course, Mr
Peabody, though you are a policeman, you’ll take the husband’s part; of
course. Nevertheless, I _should_ like to know why they can’t hang him?
The brute!
_Peabody._ Now, in the first place, my dear Mrs Nutts----
_Nutts._ Don’t talk to her in that way: I tell you she’s never been
used to it.
_Peabody._ In the first place, there’s no evidence. Gun-cotton leaves
nothing behind it--not a vestige. Certainly there is evidence to prove
that one minute there was a woman, in a certain gown, in a certain
place; that there was a report: and then there was no woman; nothing
more than a little white floating smoke. Now, Mrs Nutts, the law can’t
be satisfied with this. Where is the woman? Where’s her remains? The
majesty of the English law demands the body to sit upon.
_Mrs Nutts._ Fiddle-dee--nonsense! There’s plenty of people to swear
that the man had a wife, and now he can’t show one: isn’t that enough?
_Nosebag._ I should say no; because it’s very well known in any court
o’ law that wives do sometimes go off without a bit o’ gun-cotton in
the matter.
_Nutts._ So you see, Mrs Nutts, your life is in my hands. I’ve only to
make you a present of a nice-prepared cotton gown, and----
_Mrs Nutts._ Don’t you think it, Mr Nutts; for from this blessed
minute, knowing what I do know--and I hope all women will follow my
example--I’ll never wear nothing but silk.
_Slowgoe._ Gun-cotton! I don’t believe a word about it. All
new-fangled stuff. If we once go to war with gun-cotton, and give up
our honest powder--the powder that won a Nile, and Trafalgar, and
Waterloo--there’s an end of the British Constitution. They’re going to
take the flints out of the muskets, too, and trust to ’cussion-caps.
Well, if a war does come, I hope we shan’t see the King o’ the French,
not only King of Great Britain, but the Governor of the Bank of England.
_Nutts._ Wonderful discoveries, certainly! We make gunpowder of cotton
to make wounds with, and lint out of linen to cure ’em.
_Peabody._ I wonder what Friar Bacon would say if he knew it. Friar
Bacon, Mr Nosebag, was a parson, and invented gunpowder. You knew that,
I suppose?
_Nosebag._ No, I didn’t; but from some parsons I’ve heard and read
about, I can quite believe it.
_Slowgoe._ Well, my ’pinion is, if Friar Bacon was to hear of this
gun-cotton, as you call it, he’d treat it with the contempt it
deserves. I say again, I don’t believe it.
_Nutts._ Suppose you was blown up to the Monument by it?
_Slowgoe._ Well, I hate a man who doesn’t stick to his principles--I
wouldn’t believe it then.
_Nutts._ Ha! Mr Slowgoe, don’t you in that manner fly in the face of
fortin and your washer-woman. At this very moment, I look upon it,
every man’s life is in the hands of his clear-starcher; for who knows
what they’ll make starch of now? and then for gowns and petticoats,
and----
_Mrs Nutts._ There; hold your tongue, Mr Nutts. I’ll be on my guard, I
assure you. You don’t get rid of me like the poor woman at the Surr’y,
I can tell you. For if the gun-cotton only wants a good pressing to go
off, I won’t wear a blessed stitch that I don’t first see well mangled.
_Nutts._ You’re a prudent woman, Mrs Nutts. Nevertheless, you’ve talked
quite enough to-day; and I don’t know that you’ve any partic’lar
business at all in the shop.
_Mrs Nutts._ Don’t you? Then I have business; and I tell you what--now
little Tommy’s weaned, it’s my intention to come and have a long talk
in the shop every week. You’re not going to have it all your own way,
as you _have_ done, I can assure you.
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