“Hard work,” said Padna, “never killed the gentry.”
“No,” said Micus, “nor decency either, and if they were to eat twice as much, ‘twouldn’t make them any better.”
“When you come to think about it,” said Padna, “’tis the hell of a thing why a man should have to work for himself, or have to work at all.”
“Indeed it is, and I always lose my temper when I think of the poor men and women, too, who must get up when it is only time to be going to bed, and work until they fall on the floor from sheer exhaustion and no one to care or bother about them. Sure, there must be something wrong, if that sort of thing is right, and the gentry should be ashamed of themselves for making such conditions possible and they doing nothing but spending money that they never earned, and making laws for the poor.”
“’Tis disgusting,” said Micus, “to think that we should have to work for any one, even though they might be the Prince of Wales, or the Duke of the North Pole himself.”
“I can’t see for the life of me,” said Padna, “why we couldn’t make our living as easy as the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, the insects of the field, or the policemen. Sure, when you come to think of it, a king is no more than any other man, only for all the fuss that does be made about him. And I don’t see why one man should be thought better than another when he isn’t. Only for the fine clothes that some of us wear, no one would take the least notice of us, and if you were to put a dead king and a dead duke, and yourself and myself beside each other, Micus, on the top of the Galtee Mountains, and exposed our carcasses to the rains and the snow, not to mention the southwesterly gales, for three months, when the experts would come along to identify us, ’tis the way they would think that you were the duke and I was the king, and the duke was no one but yourself, and who could the king be but myself.”
“And maybe ’tis the way that they would think that you were only the duke, and that myself was the king,” said Padna.
“’Tis true, of course, that a king is no more than one of ourselves when he is dead, but there is no doubt about him being a good deal more when he is alive. Nevertheless, it would be a proud thing for the Padna Dan family to have one of their kinsmen buried with the pomp and ceremony of a mighty monarch, and they never to produce anything more than birdcatchers and bowl players. Yes, Padna, ‘twould be a great thing entirely, and ye that always lived in a house that you could put your hand down the chimney and open the front door, if you forgot your latch-key. The mistake would never be discovered till the Judgment Day, and then you’d rise from your grave, glorious and triumphant with a crown of shiny jewels on your head, and a royal sceptre in your hand, and a robe of state that would cover you all over, and you looking as happy and contented as though you were used to wearing overcoats all your lifetime.”
“And what about yourself, Micus,” said Padna, “and you with a red cap on your head, like the dukes wear on state occasions, and a snowball in one hand and a bear’s claw in the other, the way the people would think you were the Duke of the North Pole and not yourself at all?”
“All the same,” said Micus, “I’d rather be a duke at any time than have to work for a living.”