Mr. Flippance winked more widely as he explained that a study of the posters would show that the Marionettes themselves never claimed to have performed before crowned heads. It was the plays that had been performed. He turned suddenly upon the rum-soothed Deacon. “You’re not denying, my Quaker friend, that Queen Victoria’s seen _Hamlet_?” “You leave me and the Queen out of it,” growled the Deacon. “Ha! Then you admit she’s seen _Hamlet_?” “Oi don’t know nawthen about it. Why _should_ she see _Hamlet_?” “Because he was the Prince of Denmark,” said Tony, winking again at his now bosom friend. “But you Methody Quaker dead-alive go-to-meeting sons of Sundayfied slugs crawl about thinking yourselves holier than Victoria, God bless her, even when it’s wood, never having seen society or ever had a drink outside Chipstone.” The Deacon was roused at last. “Never had a drink outside Chipstone!” His breast heaved with a sinister movement—was it a wheeze of wrath or of laughter? “Oi’ll goo bail my round is bigger nor yourn. There ain’t scarce a barn in East Anglia what don’t know me.” Tony’s great jaw fell. “A barnstormer! You! Rats! What do you play?” “It ain’t play—it’s work.” “Yes, I know—but what’s your repertory?” “My what?” “Your pieces.” “Oi bain’t onny a piece-worker.” “In what?” “In what you said. It ain’t always per tail.” “Retail, do you mean?” said the puzzled Tony. Will, who had listened to the conversation with an ever-expanding grin, here burst into a guffaw. Tony turned on him. “Is he kidding me?” he asked half angrily, half amicably. The answer—like Will’s departure from this enthralling parlour—was staved off by the advent of yet another head popped into the doorway. This time it was a heavily greased head with scrupulously parted hair, and was attached to a spruce young man with a spring posy in his buttonhole. But his bear’s-grease out smelt his primroses. “Hullo, Tony!” cried the aromatic apparition. “Up already!” “_I’ve_ got to work for my living,” Mr. Flippance retorted. “The dormouse season is over. You coming in, Charley, to see the show to-night?” “Me! I’ve got better things to do, old boy.” The young landlord turned to the Deacon. “Can you let me have five or six live ’uns?” The Deacon shook his head. “Oi don’t want to disoblige brother. Oi do my duty according to Peter—‘nat’ral brute beasts made to be taken and destroyed’—but they bain’t meant by the Almoighty to be taken for sport, and Oi don’t howd with fox-hunting neither.” “So I see.” Mr. Charles Mott glanced glumly at the backs of the pictures. “Ef you want to be riddy o’ warmints, shoot ’em, says Oi, or nip their brushes in traps.” “Oh, oh!” came involuntarily from Will at this blasphemy. The Deacon transfixed him with his glittering eye, but went on without pausing: “And ef you want to be riddy o’ rats, come to me. Don’t set a-worshippin’ your prize-terriers, like Ephraim jined to his idols.”