Slowgoe. (With paper.) A magnificent ceremony! What I call a holiday for a whole people.
Tickle. Quite a holiday for all the statues anyhow. Not one of ’em, I’m told, but felt it so. They say Queen Anne at St Paul’s, shook her petticoats and stood an inch higher. George the Third in Corkspur Street, raised himself in his stirrups. George the Fourth in Trafalgar Square, stroked up the bustus of his wig. And the Duke of York, perched on that very high pillar, out of the way of the sheriff, for once left off thinking of his debts as quite beneath him, and looked like a gentleman in easy circumstances.
Slowgoe. I don’t believe a word of it. Statues do this? ’Tisn’t likely. What for?
Tickle. What for? Jest as married people—ask your pardon, Mrs Nutts—grin the most at a wedding, ’cause other folks have got into a scrape as well as themselves.
Nutts. Have you heard how the waxwork at Madame Tussaud’s took it?
Tickle. Better than was expected. In course the Iron Duke will be a great opposition, a great pull agin ’em for two or three weeks; but as November comes in, and the shine’s taken out of his Grace, the waxwork has hope that folks will come back to somethin’ like nature agin.
Nutts. You saw all the show, I b’lieve, Mr Tickle?
Tickle. Pretty well, only——
Enter Cannikin, a drayman.
Well, isn’t this droll? Here’s the very man as is one of Mr Goding’s, the brewer’s, gen’lemen, as assisted at the ceremony.