Nosebag. Servant, Mrs Nutts. Where’s the master?
Mrs Nutts. If you mean Mr Nutts, he’s jest run with the pie to the bakehouse. I don’t know how it is, but the older he grows, the more partic’lar he gets with his dinners. I am sorry to say it of my own husband, but I don’t think an angel could make a crust to suit him now—for I try, I’m sure.
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——