_Nutts._ (_In a low voice._) As for women, isn’t it dreadful to think how they _do_ run after the pipeclay? See ’em in the Park--if they don’t stare at rank and file, and fall in love with hollow squares by the heap. It is so nice, they think, to walk arm-in-arm with a bayonet. Poor gals! I do pity ’em. I never see a nice young woman courtin’ a soldier--or the soldier courtin’ her--as it may be, that I don’t say to myself, “Ha! it’s very well, my dear. You think him a sweet cretur, no doubt; and you walk along with him as if you thought the world ought to shake with the sound of his spurs and the rattling of his sword, and you hold on to his arm as if he was a giant that was born to take the wall of everybody as wasn’t sweetened with pipeclay. Poor gal! You little think that that fine fellow--that tremendous giant--that noble cretur with mustarshis to frighten a dragon, may to-morrow morning be stript to his skin, and tied up, and lashed till his blood--his blood, dearer to you than the blood in your own good-natured heart--till his blood runs, and the skin’s cut from him;--and his officer, who has been, so he says, ‘devilishly’ well-whipt at schools perhaps, and therefore thinks flogging very gentlemanly--and his officer looks on with his arms crossed, as if he was looking at the twisting of an opera-dancer, and not at the struggling and shivering of one of God’s mangled creturs--and the doctor never feels the poor soul’s pulse (because there is no pulse among privates), and the man’s taken to the hospital to live or to die, according to the farriers that lashed him. You don’t think, poor gal, when you look upon your sweetheart, or your husband, as it may be, that your sweetheart, or the father of your children, may be tied and cut up this way to-morrow morning, and only for saying ‘Hollo’ in the dark, without putting a ‘sir’ at the tail of it. No: you never think of this, young woman; or a red coat, though with ever so much gold-lace upon it, would look like so much raw flesh to you.” _Nosebag._ I wonder the women don’t get up a Anti-Bayonet ’Sociation--take a sort of pledge not to have a sweetheart that lives in fear of a cat. _Slowgoe._ Doesn’t the song say, “None but the brave deserve the fair”? _Nosebag._ Well, can’t the brave deserve the fair without deserving the cat-o’-nine-tails? _Nutts._ It’s sartinly a pity they should go together. I only know they shouldn’t have the chance in my case, if I was a woman. _Mrs Nutts._ (_From within._) I think, Mr Nutts, you’d better leave the women alone, and---- _Nutts._ Certainly, my dear. (_Again confidentially._) She’s not at all jealous; but she can’t bear to hear me say anything about the women. She has such a strong mind! Well, I was going to say, if I was a sojer, and was flogged---- _Nosebag._ Don’t talk any more about it, or I shan’t eat no dinner. Talk o’ somethin’ else.