Nosebag. What do you mean by clouds of lawn?
Nutts. Why, bishops, to be sure. They looked very noble, very fine, for certain; and yet, somehow, to my mind, their robes didn’t seem to fit well in with the scarlet and gold, and velvet and other finery. To my mind, the pictur would have been quite as well without ’em.
Slowgoe. You’re determined that I shall leave the shop.
Nutts. That’s optional, of course. And then there was the judges, kivered so with ermine as if they’d come wild into the world with the fur upon ’em. And then there was their long wigs of justice—though why justice, like an armchair, should be always covered with horse-hair, I never could find out. And then, again, there was such a heap of lords.
Slowgoe. Ha! the flowers of the world! The lilies that neither toil nor spin!
Nutts. Oh! don’t they though? If you’d have heard some of ’em, as I did, afterwards, you’d own they did spin, and precious long yarns, too.
Slowgoe. I hope nothing will happen to you, Mr Nutts; but go on.
Nutts. On a sudden the Park guns banged, and the peeresses jumped, and the colour came to their cheeks, and their eyes sparkled, and they looked at their bibs and tuckers to see that all was right—nothin’ rumpled about ’em—for they know’d by the gunpowder that the Queen was comin’.
Mrs Nutts. That must have been a minute!
Nutts. It was more than a minute—seven or eight, perhaps; and then I don’t know how many trumpets went off with such flourishes, as if they wound in and out every corner of you—and everybody seemed to say to everybody, “Hush! she’s comin’.”