Limpy. Never mind them foreigners; let’s think of the wirtues of our own homes. You’ve a vote for Vestminster, haven’t you, Mr Nutts?
Nutts. I have, sir. A vote—though I say it—as pure as drifted snow.
Mrs Nutts. And quite as uncomfortable. Often when the children want things, Nutts will have the money for the taxes to preserve what he calls his independent vote. And for years and years—no matter how I’ve been pinched—he has preserved it. And what’s the good on it? Independence! I don’t blame anybody for being independent when they can afford it; then it’s right and respectable. Otherwise it’s a piece of extravagance beyond poor people.
Nutts. Now, my dear, if you’ll let alone my politics, I’ll promise not to interfere with your turnip-tops; and I’m sure, if turnip-tops can speak, I heard ’em just now crying out for you to come and pick ’em in the kitchen. A cleverer woman at greens never lived; but for all that, my dear, you are not quite up in the House of Commons. (Mrs Nutts looks an unspoken repartee, and whisks out.) Yes, gentlemen, as I said, I have a vote.
Peabody. Well, is it promised?
Nutts. Why, I’m taken a little aback. I rayther like the address of Mr Cochrane; but, as I once heerd a feller say at the play—“His highness is discovered.”
Slowgoe. Well, I’m not surprised—not at all. When a man promises liberty by the bushel—universal suffrage and all that—I know what to expect. I haven’t read the partic’lars; but it’s true, isn’t it, that he went about the country as a wandering minstrel?
Peabody. Why, I understand that, blushing like a gentleman, he has owned as much.
Slowgoe. As I say, I haven’t heard the partic’lars; but he went about, didn’t he, with a hurdy-gurdy and white mice?
Nutts. Oh dear, no; went with guitar, and twangled the wires. But I don’t care so much about that—no, and I could have forgiven the mice, for mice out of Parliament aren’t so bad as rats in; but the unfortunate young youth—I mean Don Juan de Vega Cochrane—writ a book that, though it was all about soft-hearted ladies, wasn’t quite a book of beauty. Now, the worst of black used in all this blackening world is the black that’s put upon the name of a kind, unsuspecting woman. It’s a hard job for a man to get his hands clean after using it—it will stick worse than the real “Tyrian dye.”