_Slowgoe._ If this conversation is continued I must leave the shop. _Tickle._ And then, after a little while, I thought I saw the crowned heads put upon a bench pickin’ oakum--no; it was a lot of little snakes in knots which the crowned heads couldn’t separate; and which the more they was picked the more they stung--and didn’t the crowned heads all blow and blow, as if they’d well burnt their precious fingers! _Mrs Nutts._ Don’t talk in that way, Mr Tickle; it isn’t like a Christian; ’specially with such company as kings. For after all, poor things! they mayn’t know better. _Nutts._ And after all--I do confess it--since I’ve seen Prince Albert’s pigs at the cattle-show, I do feel a greater respect for all sorts of royalty. _Tickle._ Well, I must say it, and I don’t mean any joke, but in the respect that’s got from prize pigs there must be a good deal of gammon. _Slowgoe._ Here’s the account (_reads_): “Pigs of any breed, above twenty-six and under fifty-two weeks old.--H.R.H. Prince Albert, of Windsor Castle, a pair of three forty-one-weeks-old Bedfordshire pigs, bred by H.R.H. and fed on corn, meal, milk, and potatoes.--Second prize, £5.” _Mrs Nutts._ And you can’t think it, Mr Slowgoe, such loves! I could have nursed ’em! _Nutts._ I own it; loyalty seemed to steal all over me as I looked at ’em. I confess the weakness, but had my country been on one side, and them pigs on the other, I should have been a traitor in the cause of pork. _Mrs Nutts._ As I said to Mrs Biggleswade over the way--for she went with us; the poor soul! like me, it isn’t often she gets out from that brute her--but never mind--as I said to Mrs Biggleswade, “My dear, this is the Prince’s pork, and they don’t look like common vulgar pigs, do they?” And they didn’t; they looked as white as if they’d been washed with the best scented Windsor soap, and dried upon damask. “My dear,” whispered Mrs Biggleswade to me, and I could see something was passing in her mind--“My dear, them’s the Prince’s pigs! Well, I feel so affected, I could kiss ’em.” _Tickle._ Not bad things, I daresay, to put your lips to, when roasted. _Mrs Nutts._ Ha! There was something in ’em. They wasn’t at all common pigs, I tell you. Fed on corn, and milk, and potatoes! Under the Prince’s own eye, too! only think, wasn’t that something to consider, as the sweet things lay grunting--for they was too fat to stand--grunting afore you? _Slowgoe._ Mrs Nutts, I must honour your principles. To a loyal mind, it must be impossible to look upon those pigs, and not feel there was a perfume, as it were, of royalty about ’em. _Nutts._ I can’t say about that: when I looked at ’em, I seemed to smell nothin’ but sage and onions.