Nutts. I own it; loyalty seemed to steal all over me as I looked at ’em. I confess the weakness, but had my country been on one side, and them pigs on the other, I should have been a traitor in the cause of pork.
Mrs Nutts. As I said to Mrs Biggleswade over the way—for she went with us; the poor soul! like me, it isn’t often she gets out from that brute her—but never mind—as I said to Mrs Biggleswade, “My dear, this is the Prince’s pork, and they don’t look like common vulgar pigs, do they?” And they didn’t; they looked as white as if they’d been washed with the best scented Windsor soap, and dried upon damask. “My dear,” whispered Mrs Biggleswade to me, and I could see something was passing in her mind—“My dear, them’s the Prince’s pigs! Well, I feel so affected, I could kiss ’em.”
Tickle. Not bad things, I daresay, to put your lips to, when roasted.
Mrs Nutts. Ha! There was something in ’em. They wasn’t at all common pigs, I tell you. Fed on corn, and milk, and potatoes! Under the Prince’s own eye, too! only think, wasn’t that something to consider, as the sweet things lay grunting—for they was too fat to stand—grunting afore you?
Slowgoe. Mrs Nutts, I must honour your principles. To a loyal mind, it must be impossible to look upon those pigs, and not feel there was a perfume, as it were, of royalty about ’em.
Nutts. I can’t say about that: when I looked at ’em, I seemed to smell nothin’ but sage and onions.
Mrs Nutts. Don’t talk in that way, Nutts. It appears to me wicked to think of eating ’em: all the while I looked at ’em, they seemed to take me nearer to his Royal Highness. And so it seemed with a good many other ladies; I’m sure there wasn’t one of us that would have begrudged her golden ear-rings to put in their precious noses.
Tickle. Women are such devoted creturs—specially when there’s princes in the way. To throw ear-rings to pigs! Well, what next?
Mrs Nutts. Ha! but they wasn’t at all like common pigs, I tell you—so genteel; not at all like other pork. In a minute you could see they were pigs of high breedin’; for they lay upon their sides, with their noses a-restin’ on the troughs, doing nothin’. They wouldn’t try to take the trouble to look at us; they was so fat they couldn’t open their eyes theirselves, when a young man—to oblige us—with his finger and thumb opened ’em for ’em. And Mrs Biggleswade and me both agreed, that for pig’s eyes, they were the sweetest blue we ever see.
Tickle. Ha! This comes o’ being fattened on royal milk, and filled with royal potatoes. Jest like you women. If a great man was to bring up a prize donkey, you’d swear it was the finest zebra; and, for what I know, wear thistles in your caps and bonnets in honour of the animal. If the Prince’s pigs were to be bled into black puddings, what a scramble there would be to buy the delicacy!