will have been ruined in their business.

QUEEN. Local option is not going to come yet, Brown.

J.B. (_firmly_). No, Ma'am, not while I vote conservative, it won't.
But I was looking ahead; I was talking about Mr. Gladstone.

QUEEN. Mr. Gladstone has retired from politics. At least he is not going
to take office again.

J.B. Don't you believe him, Ma'am. Mr. Gladstone is not a retiring
character. He's in to-day's paper again--columns of him; have ye seen?

QUEEN. Yes; quite as much as I wish to see.

J.B. And there's something in what he says, I don't deny.

QUEEN. There's a great deal in what he says, I don't understand, and that
I don't wish to.

J.B. Now you never said a truer thing than that in your life, Ma'am!
That's just how I find him. Oh, but he's a great man; and it's wonderful
how he appreciates the Scot, and looks up to his opinion.

(_But this is a line of conversation in which his Royal Mistress
declines to be interested. And she is helped, at that moment, by something
which really does interest her_.)

QUEEN. Brown, how did you come to scratch your leg?