Nutts. I know it from his Lordship’s footman, who found the letter in his master’s letter-basket; that footman has a good eye for a penn’orth, and—but let this be between us—that private letter will appear to-morrow in the Morning Post! I tell you, tons of gun-cotton.
Mrs Nutts. What is all this about gun-cotton? Cotton going off and blowing up! Well, as I was saying to Mrs Biggleswade over the way, it’s enough to frighten a woman from ever taking a needle-and-thread in her hand. I don’t know how it is; but now, somehow, I do dread to go near my cotton-box.
Slowgoe. That’s not a new complaint with Mrs Slowgoe, by any means.
Tickle. A very fine invention this gun-cotton, no doubt; but it gives a dreadful power to husbands: no woman’s safe.
Mrs Nutts. Bless my soul, Mr Tickle! Not that I’ve any fear of Nutts, but do tell me what you mean. How do they make the gun-cotton go off?
Tickle. That’s it. You take the cotton and you steeps it in what they call a sirlution of hydrogin and hogsesgin and creamovallygin.
Mrs Nutts. Dreadful!
Tickle. And then you dry it; and then it’s prepared. One woman’s blow’d to bits already, and the police is after her husband. I see you haven’t heard about it. Certainly it has been strangely kept out o’ the newspapers.
Mrs Nutts. Ha! that’s because only men write for the newspapers, Mr Tickle. If it had been the other way; yes, if a poor woman had only killed her husband, we should never have heard the last of it. But of course a wife’s nothing. Go on, Mr Tickle—I’ve made the pudding, Mr Nutts; you needn’t be looking knives and forks at me in that manner.—Go on: the poor soul was blown to bits?
Tickle. You see, she would go to the play; and because she’d go, her husband wouldn’t.