_Mrs Nutts._ Don’t talk in that way, Nutts. It appears to me wicked to think of eating ’em: all the while I looked at ’em, they seemed to take me nearer to his Royal Highness. And so it seemed with a good many other ladies; I’m sure there wasn’t one of us that would have begrudged her golden ear-rings to put in their precious noses. _Tickle._ Women are such devoted creturs--specially when there’s princes in the way. To throw ear-rings to pigs! Well, what next? _Mrs Nutts._ Ha! but they wasn’t at all like common pigs, I tell you--so genteel; not at all like other pork. In a minute you could see they were pigs of high breedin’; for they lay upon their sides, with their noses a-restin’ on the troughs, doing nothin’. They wouldn’t try to take the trouble to look at us; they was so fat they couldn’t open their eyes theirselves, when a young man--to oblige us--with his finger and thumb opened ’em for ’em. And Mrs Biggleswade and me both agreed, that for pig’s eyes, they were the sweetest blue we ever see. _Tickle._ Ha! This comes o’ being fattened on royal milk, and filled with royal potatoes. Jest like you women. If a great man was to bring up a prize donkey, you’d swear it was the finest zebra; and, for what I know, wear thistles in your caps and bonnets in honour of the animal. If the Prince’s pigs were to be bled into black puddings, what a scramble there would be to buy the delicacy! _Mrs Nutts._ There now, Mr Tickle, I don’t want to hear your heathen discourse. If I was to look upon such puddin’s--coming from the Prince’s sty--as the blood royal, what’s that to you? And if Mr Nutts was like any other man--which he isn’t--he’d hardly hear his wife talked to in this manner. And then, Mr Slowgoe--not but what the pigs carry away the bell with me--then you should have only seen the Prince’s heifer! _Slowgoe._ Here it is, I see (_reads_): “EXTRA STOCK.--Cattle.--H. R. H. Prince Albert, of Windsor Castle, a two-years-and-eleven-months-old Highland Scot and Durham heifer, bred by Mr Milnes, Downham, Norfolk, and fed on cake, meal, hay, _Swedes_, and mangold-wurzel! travelled to the show on foot nine miles, and by railway twenty-two miles.--Silver medal.” Now, does the medal, I wonder, go to the Prince or to Mr Milnes? _Mrs Nutts._ To Mr Milnes, indeed! Like his impudence! To Prince Albert, of course; and I should hope on state days and drawing-rooms, and so forth, he’ll wear it. _Tickle._ No objection to that at all. As there’s the Order of the Golden Fleece, and the Order of the Elephant, and suchlike--given to statesmen and soldiers, very often for swindling and killing one another--eh, Mr Peabody? you’re a scholar, and know all about it--I don’t see why at these cattle-shows there shouldn’t be the Order of the Ox--the Order of the Steer--the Order of the Ram--the Order of the Wether Sheep--the Order of the China Pig--and the Order of the Pig of Any Breed.