_Nutts._ No doubt on it, Mrs Nutts. But what a comfort, my love, that they’d allow you the preference. Shouldn’t wonder, Slowgoe, if they didn’t make you a cardinal. _Peabody._ Yes; Cardinale Lentopasso. Rome has certainly seen her Slowgoes in her day. The Lentopasso---- _Mrs Nutts._ Now, Mr Peabody, none of your Greek, if you have been a schoolmaster. _Peabody._ The Lentopasso is a very old name in the Church. The family crest is a snail proper chewing opium. _Mrs Nutts._ The nasty creturs! But just like ’em. _Tickle._ (_With paper._) So they’re going to make the Duchess of Marlborough pay a fine for shooting her husband’s pheasants. Rather hard, isn’t it; a wife not allowed to kill her husband’s game? _Mrs Nutts._ But it’s all done to lower marriage--all done to make little of the weddin’-ring. I’m sure I wonder they don’t alter the marriage service. Talking about flesh of flesh, and bones of bones, and a lawful married woman is to take out a stamp to shoot at what belongs to her! What do you say to that, Mr Slowgoe? _Slowgoe._ Why, really, Mrs Nutts, I’ve a great respect for any duchess--nevertheless, the game-laws is, I must say it, a solemn matter; mustn’t be tampered with because of the vulgar. If duchesses will insist upon using powder--I mean, in course, gunpowder--they must be properly authenticated so to do. _Nutts._ But if ladies will shoot--if the taste’s coming up that way--why don’t they shirk the licence, and sport with poultry? Aren’t there hens, and ducks, and geese to be killed for the kitchen? I don’t see why the fashion shouldn’t go up from chickens to bullocks. _Tickle._ Talking about shooting, I see Prince Albert shot a whole swarm of rabbits at Virginny Water on Monday--rabbits that was sent (_reads paper_) “to Mr Humphries of Egham, the contractor for the purchase of all rabbits killed in the home and great parks.” Isn’t that droll?--for the Queen’s husband to sell rabbits? _Slowgoe._ There you go with your sneering disloyalty agin. Not at all droll, for there isn’t one of them rabbits that won’t be turned into a beef-steak or a mutton-chop. _Mrs Nutts._ La! how do you mean? _Slowgoe._ Why, in this way. The money that Mr Humphries gives for ’em will, of course, be laid out upon butcher’s-meat, and at Christmas be distributed to the Windsor poor! _Nutts._ Shouldn’t have any objection to all the game in the world, if it could be so transmogrified. A pheasant shan’t be disgraced with ribs of beef for a proxy. _Tickle._ So the Court, I see, is gone to Osborne House, in the Isle of Wight. _Slowgoe._ As a loyal subject, that Isle of Wight makes me very uneasy. To be sure, it’s rather near to Portsmouth; nevertheless, when the war breaks out---- _Nosebag._ And I’m told it’s whizzing up in France like a gingerbeer-cork with the string cut.