FIRST CITIZEN
Don’t ye ask awkward questions.
SECOND CITIZEN
Here’s another coming!
FIRST CITIZEN
That’s my Lord Chancellor Eldon. Wot he’ll say, and wot he’ll look!
Mr. Pitt will be here soon.
BOY
I don’t like Billy. He killed Uncle John’s parrot.
SECOND CITIZEN
How may ye make that out, youngster?
BOY
Mr. Pitt made the war, and the war made us want sailors; and Uncle
John went for a walk down Wapping High Street to talk to the pretty
ladies one evening; and there was a press all along the river that
night—a regular hot one—and Uncle John was carried on board a
man-of-war to fight under Nelson; and nobody minded Uncle John’s
parrot, and it talked itself to death. So Mr. Pitt killed Uncle
John’s parrot; see it, sir?
SECOND CITIZEN
You had better have a care of this boy, friend. His brain is too
precious for the common risks of Cheapside. Not but what he might
as well have said Boney killed the parrot when he was about it.
And as for Nelson—who’s now sailing shinier seas than ours, if
they’ve rubbed Her off his slate where he’s gone to,—the French
papers say that our loss in him is greater than our gain in ships;
so that logically the victory is theirs. Gad, sir, it’s almost
true!
[A hurrahing is heard from Cheapside, and the crowd in that
direction begins to hustle and show excitement.]
FIRST CITIZEN
He’s coming, he’s coming! Here, let me lift you up, my boy.— Why,
they have taken out the horses, as I am man alive!
SECOND CITIZEN
Pitt for ever!—Why, here’s a blade opening and shutting his mouth
like the rest, but never a sound does he raise!
THIRD CITIZEN
I’ve not too much breath to carry me through my day’s work, so I
can’t afford to waste it in such luxuries as crying Hurrah to
aristocrats. If ye was ten yards off y’d think I was shouting
as loud as any.
SECOND CITIZEN
It’s a very mean practice of ye to husband yourself at such a time,
and gape in dumbshow like a frog in Plaistow Marshes.