“Why, ‘The Beggar’s Opera,’ your Grace. The name’s original too, if it do but take. There’s much in a title. If I can better it, I will.”
“You can’t better it,” says his Grace. “ ’Tis saucy, provocative, and runs off the tongue. What would you have more? What’s the heroine’s mellifluous name? Lindamira? Amoret?”
“Why no, your Grace—Polly Peachum. It hath a common or village sound to my ear. I doubt it takes!”
“You’re an old fool, Richie,” said the Duke. “Its commonness is its recommendation. Don’t all the fine world s’encanailler nowadays? There are as vulgar trollops at Court as any——”
“In St. Giles’s,” finished the American Prince. “True, O King,—and now, Richie, have our chairs called, and may the gods be good to thee and give such a Polly Peachum to thy embrace as ever the world hath seen. O the sweet name! I protest it tastes of peaches hot in the sun. I can see her lips like two cherries—her eyes blue as summer seas, her voice like the gurgling and purling of a brook, her arms round and smooth as Parian marble. O Richie—Richie, you old devil, what images have you raised! If you find her not, I’ll go search her myself.”
“Your Lordship hath but to sit still and whistle,” cries Rich, “to have all the pretty charmers come running to you like a flock of hens! There’s a scene somewhat like it in Gay’s opera, where Macheath the highwayman—who needs not even to whistle, has them running all about him, and each with a baby on her arm.”
“That’s comical!” says the Duke laughing, “and does pretty Polly pipe her eye to see it?”
“Not she! your Grace! A delicate—or indelicate regret is all the stage directions admit of. She’s a fine pliable girl and after a little tiff with Lucy Lockit comes to heel like a spaniel.”
He began humming in a rich throaty voice—
“Lucy Locket lost her pocket,