Nosebag. And goes with ’em—which he always may do—to the public-house.
Mrs Nutts. Oh, you needn’t teach him that. But I was going to ask, Mr Slowgoe, is it true that they’re going to take the dear Dook down again from the Park arch?
Tickle. Why, they do say he’s received warning. All I know is he’s beginning to look very black about something.
Mrs Nutts. Well, I don’t know—I was saying so to Mrs Biggleswade over the way—but after all that had been said, he looked very nice and comfortable. To be sure the horse does look a little more concerned about the battle than the Dook himself; but Mrs Biggleswade assures me that that’s quite as the thing happened, all according to ’istory. But why—I want to know, after all the fuss of lugging him up—why is he coming down agin?
Nosebag. Why, the Daily Noose says that the Queen has done it all. Her Majesty, having a taste, and knowing how a gentleman ought to look on horseback, won’t have the Dook nohow.
Slowgoe. That’s one story; but I think the other much more likely. And that is, that it’s aginst the Queen’s perrogative, and contrary to her state and dignity, to have any subject perched upon so high a place that her carriage must drive right under him. And now I think of it—for it never struck me before—there is a sort of a petty treason in it. Good thing Sir Frederick Trench didn’t live in Queen Elizabeth’s time. She knew how to use her royal perrogative; she’d have had his head off to a certain.
Tickle. Suppose she had. What would she have made o’ that? Why, nothin’.
Mrs Nutts. But the poor soul and his horse must go somewhere! What’s to become of him, can any good Christian tell?
Nutts. Very like a traveller gone astray, and wanting good entertainment for man and beast.
Tickle. Well, I have heard, if nothing better can be done with it, that it’s to be taken somewhere to the sea-coast, and made a sort of lighthouse of.