_Nosebag._ Well, nor I don’t know how it is; but as we lose, as I heard a player say the other night--as we lose “the finer feelings of the ’art,” we seem to think more and more of wittles. Twenty years ago, when I was first married, I could have dined three days in the week on periwinkles; but I own it--I couldn’t be happy on periwinkles now. _Mrs Nutts._ Oh, in course not. I’m sure I don’t know who’d be a poor woman, put upon as we are! Not a bit of power in our own hands--not so much as pie-crust left us. _Tickle._ (_With newspaper._) Well, really, Mrs Nutts--axing your pardon--I do sometimes think you have a little the whip-hand of us. _Mrs Nutts._ I don’t see how--I wish we had. We should know how to use it--_we_ should. _Tickle._ Why, see here now. Haven’t you heard all about the Spanish dancer Donna Lola Montes and the old King of Bavaria? _Mrs Nutts._ I don’t want to hear anything about such creturs. What is it? _Tickle._ Why, she’s doin’ wonders. Taking the whole kingdom and whippin’ it round like a top. _Nosebag._ A most charmin’ woman. She was here at the opera--don’t I remember the bills? When the other lady dancers wouldn’t dance with her--and screamed when they come nigh her--and when she went away, insisted upon having the house whitewashed, and vinegar and brown paper burnt in every corner. And then she went to Poland, where she stabbed the Emperor’s own policeman; for she wears a dagger for a busk in her stays--don’t you call ’em busks, Mrs Nutts?--in---- _Mrs Nutts._ There, go along; how should I know? Stabbed him with a dagger, eh? Poor soul! and I daresay served him right. Well? _Tickle._ Now she’s got to Bavaria; and she makes no more of the King’s crown than a thimble. And they do say that the old gen’l’man--that is, the King--though he’s got a snow-white beard a foot long, is gone so raving mad about her that the unfortunate old man doesn’t know the Queen, his own lawful wife. _Mrs Nutts._ Nothing more likely. _Tickle._ And more than that, Mrs Nutts; she’s kicked over the Cabinet like a tea-table, and smashed the Ministry as if they was so many cups and sarcers. Besides which, the paper here says, she walks about Munich with a bulldog to pertect her innocence. _Mrs Nutts._ Innocence! I’m not cruel--no, I should hope not; but, as I’m a living woman, if I was the Queen, I’d gullyteen her! _=NUTTS= comes in._ _Nutts._ Hallo! Mrs Nutts! Talking about bloodshed in that horrible manner? _Mrs Nutts._ Oh, of course; you’ll take her part. It’s such creturs that are most cared for; but I only wish I was Queen, that’s all. I’m not cruel, as I said afore; but as sure as I’d a palace gate, her head should be a-top of it; yes, if she’d a thousand bayonets for busks, that it should. And you ought to be ashamed of yourself, Nutts--you, the father of a family--to stand there taking the cretur’s part. Dormalolez, indeed!