_Slowgoe._ When it goes off, ’twouldn’t at all surprise me if that Joynveal was to ’tack the Isle of Wight, and Osborne House in ’special. I must say it, I should sleep easier with the thoughts of a handful of forty-pounders there. A battery or two would help to set my mind at rest. _Tickle._ The Queen and the Prince, they do say, have gone down to see about the planting, and not the guarding, of the place--planting it with trees. _Peabody._ What a very pretty picture! Her Gracious Majesty dropping acorns in the earth. Britannia sowing her own oaks. _Tickle._ Dear soul! And let us hope she’ll live to see a flourishing crop of three-deckers. _Nutts._ There goes one o’clock. Pig’s ready. Can’t shave another hair. (_Runs out._) _Mrs Nutts._ There! I told you all so. A man with a wife and family, and yet sich a headstrong cretur of crackling! [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER XV. _=Nutts.= In his circle._ _Slowgoe._ (_With newspaper._) Pretty quiet, I see, about this Cracow business. _Nutts._ Why, yes; when kings choose to break into towns, it’s what we may ’nominate burglary made easy. Heads may do anything, if they happen to be anointed, as you call it; for then they’ve been made so slippery, Justice can’t catch hold of ’em. _Slowgoe._ Mr Nutts, you’re incurable. Justice is very well for people like us; but when it comes to emperors and kings--why, then, you see the scales of Justice---- _Nutts._ I know; not big enough for royal transactions. Justice may keep a chandler’s shop in the Old Bailey, to serve out penn’orths to poor people---- _Nosebag._ And sometimes cruel hard penn’orths, too. _Nutts._ But she hasn’t weights heavy enough for wholesale work. She can’t weigh cities and towns, and thousands of men, women, and children, for royal customers. There’s no place sufficiently large in this world for her to set up her scales in. _Peabody._ Why, no; perhaps not in this world. But heaven’s big enough, Mr Nutts; and there’s a destiny, they tell us, that weighs mountains. _Slowgoe._ Now none of your irreligion, Mr Peabody. If the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Austria and of Russia---- _Tickle._ Well, I’d a droll dream about them a night or two ago. I’d been reading a police case and fell asleep, and I dreamt that I saw the three of ’em, with their crowns upon their heads, put into a police-van. And then I thought I saw a policeman in a coat of blue fire--no reflections on you, Mr Peabody--jump upon the steps, and heard him bang to the door, and cry out with a jolly loud voice, “_All right, =Newgate=!_” _Slowgoe._ Well, I’m not a cruel person; but if order’s to be at all respected, I’d hang any man for dreaming a dream like that. _Tickle._ And then I thought the three crowned heads--and how often has Fortin crowned where she ought to have bonneted!--the three crowned heads was put upon a cast-iron treadmill; and as they went up and up, it grew warmer and warmer, till at last it was red-hot.