Tickle. Wouldn’t chuck nothin’, maybe, under a lady’s-maid.
Nutts. Very partic’lar tender parish St Pancras’; tender as a maid’s face, to be sure: and certainly it does become the same parish to kick up such a hubbub about chucking a girl’s chin, when they don’t mind chucking a poor pauper wench into the “shed,” as they call it; and so—when she gets out—driving her to chuck herself into the canal, to be dragged out for a coroner’s jury to sit upon. It isn’t much, when they crowd gals and old women into the “shed,” and the “feather-room,” and places that fond o’ pork wouldn’t keep pigs in; that’s not much—oh no! Poor Mary Ann Jones may chuck herself into the canal and be drowned—she’s only a pauper, as the song says, “as nobody owns;” but to chuck a gal’s chin—ha! that’s something dreadful—and the vestry, as I’ve read somewhere, “feels it’s man’s first duty to fly to her succour.”
Tickle. I hope Mr Pike will get over the shock; though I have heard he’s so taken it to heart, the very thought o’ chucking the chin of a servant-gal—though where will you see prettier chins for a red ribbin sometimes?—that he’s gone ill, had his knocker tied up, and straw laid down afore the door.
Peabody. And yet, I believe, it’s quite regular—a courtesy only expected upon a canvas. Why, there’s hardly a member of the House of Commons that doesn’t feel it his bounden duty to give a kiss for every vote.
Mrs Nutts. And, as I say, many of ’em married men, no doubt? It really makes one shudder!
Peabody. Now, I take it, the little attention is in a very fair proportion. If a candidate for the House of Commons kisses, surely a vestryman may “chuck.”
Mrs Nutts. There, Mr Peabody; you’ve been a schoolmaster, I know, and it’s like you scholars; feelings are nothing in your hands. You take ’em and twist ’em and turn ’em into as many ways and shapes as the man that goes about with a sheet o’ writing-paper, and folds it into everything, from a coal-scuttle to a chest o’ drawers. Just like scholars, as they’re called: and how I do pity their wives!
Slowgoe. (With paper.) Here’s another man writes that he can make gunpowder out of sawdust, another out of paper, another out of anything.
Mrs Nutts. I read that about the sawdust myself, and for that reason I never again grate a nutmeg with my own hands; for the world’s taken such a turn, who now can say what will happen? As I said to Mrs Biggleswade over the way, it’s my opinion, since they can find gunpowder in a cotton gown, and, in fact, gunpowder in everything, why, we mightn’t know one minute from the t’other when the whole world will be blown up!
Tickle. And that’s your opinion, Mrs Nutts.