_Slowgoe._ Now, none of your low company, Mr Nosebag: I won’t have it. Go on, Mr Nutts; you was speaking of the admirers of the Duke. _Nutts._ No, I warn’t. I was speaking of the ’dolators. I like admiration; but I hate ’dolatry of any man. I can hear the word Waterloo, and not go down upon my knees to it. Well, I shouldn’t ha’ liked these folks to ha’ gone under the wheels, theirselves; but since last Tuesday was Michaelmas-day, a good many on ’em might ha’ found very proper proxies. _Nosebag._ They might have drew a flock of the birds under, to be sure. _Nutts._ In course. And it would have been so in keeping, wouldn’t it? Crushing the goose-quills under the iron wheels of war! Now I think of it, that’s not a bad notion. Eh? _Slowgoe._ (_Jumping up._) Good-morning, Mr Nutts. Never again do I enter your shop. A man who can speak thus of a statue of all we love, a man who can talk in such an infidel way of Waterloo, and--but, good-morning!--I think I’ve had a lucky escape, seeing how often I’ve been shaved by an atheist. (_Exit._) _Nosebag._ See what it is, Nutts, to have principles. A customer gone for life! _Nutts._ Not a bit on it. He only wanted to go off, like a squib, with a bang--and he thinks he’s done it. Didn’t like the touch of the geese; thought it a little too hard upon himself, perhaps. Now, what do you say to my notion, Mr Peabody? You ought to know--you’ve been a schoolmaster. _Peabody._ Before I entered the police, I had that melancholy honour. Certainly there is something in your notion of the geese that might be improved. Michaelmas-day might be made still more memorable by a yearly sacrifice, after the old Pagan manner, at the Hyde Park arch, under the statue. Recollecting classical instances--and on my beat at night, it is now and then a comfort to me to rub up my rusty Latin; indeed, I sometimes catch myself crying, “_I præ sequor_,” instead of “Move on, I’ll be after you”--well, as I say, recollecting classical instances, there might every Michaelmas be performed at Hyde Park, in honour and memory of the Statue Committee, the Great Goose Sacrifice. _Nutts._ It sounds promising: go on. How--in your classical manner--would you manage it? _Peabody._ Why, I propose to have an equal number--that is, a goose for every committee-man, whose name, for the nonce, the goose should bear. And the goose should have fillets of sage about its head, and a rope of onions circled about its neck and body; and its throat should be cut to the tune of the “British Grenadiers,” played on the brassiest band to be had; and it should be drawn, and stuffed and roasted, and its savoury, smoking body be divided amongst the populace. _Nutts._ And so with every committee-man--that is, so with every goose? _Peabody._ So with every goose. And so should the glory of the Committee endure to all time, and the names of a Rutland and a Trench be odorous in the land! [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER IX.