be smothered. I'd hang, draw, and quarter the lot. What do we want a mob of vampires like that for? I'd send 'em all on board a man-o'-war, if I'd my will, and give 'em a good welting four or five times a day, and let 'em see how they like that. And it'll come to this at last: mark my words if it don't. People's eyes begin to be a little matter open: they only want to open 'em just a leetle more, and bang comes a rattling revolution."
"Not a bit of it," said Pokey, who always felt indignant when Obadiah spoke of a revolution. "Revolutions is mighty fine things for to talk about, but we aint going to have 'em. Look at me, for instance. Me and my missis has got six-and-twenty pun ten in the savings'-bank—wouldn't I fight till I dropped before I'd lose that six-and-twenty pun ten, think you? And how many thousands of men is there in the very same perdicament?"
"Fight till you dropped, for six-and-twenty pun ten!" retorted Obadiah, sneeringly. "What's six-and-twenty pun ten?
"As much to me as six-and-twenty thousand pun ten is to any of your dukes, lords, and bishops."
"Why you aint got a mite of patriotic spirit in you!"
"I aint agoing to let any patriotic spirit do me out of my money."
"Do you out of your money! I'm ashamed of you, Pokey. A man of your intellects, too!"
"I don't care: intellects in this world aint of much use to a man without money."
"Then you think that such locusts as Teddy Rouse ought to be allowed to do just as they please."
"No, I don't."
"And you'd pay 'em elevenpence-halfpenny out of every blessed shilling you earn, that they might have their French Rosalies?"
"No, I wouldn't."
"You wouldn't! Why look at Teddy Rouse. He's a sample of the sack. He must have his Rosalie, and where will you go to find one that hasn't hisn? Look at the thing logically—not through the short-sighted spectacles which always bring in view your six-and-twenty pun ten, but logically—"
"It'll take a lot of logic to convince me that I should be a better man without that six-and-twenty pun ten than I am with it."
"Well, but listen. You don't at all like these locusts. Very good! You don't at all like the idea of a revolution. Good again!—But if it's impossible to get rid of 'em without a revolution, what do you say then?"
"Why, rather than stand and see my money scrambled for, send I may live, I'd fight till I dropped."
"Then you're a Tory. I know you're a Tory. You've no right to vote for the yellows at all."
"Haven't I no right to vote for the yellows! My father was a yellow, and he brought me up a yellow; and if ever you catch me changing my colour, expect to catch a fox asleep. If I had no money, I shouldn't care a button about a revolution: a revolution then wouldn't
