Nosebag. Nor I.
Nutts. Gentlemen, allow me for a moment to think myself dead and buried, and to thank you warmly from the churchyard. Your friendship for my widder and fatherless babes is quite affectin’.
Slowgoe. (With paper.) There really is no enjoying a bit of news. Such nonsense! Women shaving men, indeed! They might be allowed to lather us, and that, I think, is going quite far enough. But do let us talk of something serious. This, now, is rather an awful matter. This time—and no mistake—Mother Church really is in danger.
Tickle. Well, she’s used to it; by this time, I should think, must rather like it. What’s the matter?
Slowgoe. Oh, the old enemy—the Scarlet Woman of Rome. Here’s the Surrey Protestant Alliance as meets at the Horns, in Kensington. It’s all out. Colonel Sir Digby Mackworth says, all the reporters of the newspapers are all of ’em Papishes.
Mrs Nutts. La! Never! Well, if that’s true, not a newspaper comes into this house! If he was to come to life again, I’d jest as soon let the back attic to Guy Fawkes.
Slowgoe. All Papishes, and all of ’em—with poisoned pens in their hands—sworn upon a sheet of foolscap not faithfully to report the speeches of Captain Gordon and the Rev. Hugh Stowell, and such great men as speak for the Protestant cause.
Tickle. I don’t believe it. My true ’pinion is, that if the reporters really wanted to hurt the Protestant cause, they’d put down every syllable—just as it’s said—that such talkers talk about it. It’s my belief they couldn’t do it worse service.
Peabody. Having read a good many of their speeches, I should certainly say that any alteration would better ’em.
Slowgoe. To be sure: I’d forgot I was talking to some folks no better than infidels. People who won’t believe any wickedness of the Pope! For my part, I don’t know where the religion’s gone to. When I think of these reporters let loose about London—reporters, every one on ’em, as Mr Stowell would say, hatched from a cockatrice’s egg, set upon in Trinity College for the purpose—every one full of quills as a porkipine, going to Exeter Hall and the Horns Tavern, and, for what I know, the Bull and Mouth, and the Belle Savage——