e didn't, then.

J.B. Ye're right, Ma'am.

QUEEN. The Fall made the human race decent, even if it did no good
otherwise. Brown, I've dropped my glasses.

(_He picks them up and returns them_.)

QUEEN. Thank you, Brown,

J.B. So you're expecting a visitor, ye say?

QUEEN. Yes. You haven't seen Lord Beaconsfield yet, I suppose?

J.B. Since he was to arrive off the train, you mean, Ma'am? No: he came
early. He's in his room.

QUEEN. I hope they have given him a comfortable one.

J.B. It's the one I used to have. There's a good spring-bed in it, and a
kettle-ring for the whisky.

QUEEN. Oh, that's all right, then.

J.B. Will he be staying for long? Ma'am.

QUEEN. Only for a week, I'm afraid. Why?

J.B. It's about the shooting I was thinking: whether it was the deer or
the grouse he'd want to be after.

QUEEN. I don't think Lord Beaconsfield is a sportsman.

J.B. I know that, Ma'am, well enough. But there's many who are not
sportsmen that think they've got to do it--when they come north of the
Tweed.

QUEEN. Lord Beaconsfield will not shoot, I'm sure. You remember him,
Brown, being here before?

J.B. Eh! Many years ago, that was; he was no but Mr. Disraeli then. But he
was the real thing, Ma'am: oh, a nice gentleman.

QUEEN. He is always very nice to me.

J.B. I remember now, when he first came, he put a tip into me hand. And
when I let him know the liberty he had taken, "Well, Mr. Brown," he said,
"I've made a mistake, but I don't take it back again!"

QUEEN. Very nice and sensible.

J.B. And indeed it was, Ma'am. Many a man would never have had the wit to
leave well alone by just apologising for it. But there was an
understandingness about him, that often you don't find. After that he
always talked to me like an equal-just like yourself might do. But Lord,
Ma'am, his ignorance, it was surprising!

QUEEN. Most extraordinary you should think that, Brown!

J.B. Ah! You haven't talked to him as I have, Ma'am: only about politics,
and poetry, and things like that, where, maybe, he knows a bit more than I
do (though he didn't know his Burns so well as a man ought that thinks to
make laws for Scotland!). But to hear him talking about natural facts,
you'd think he was just inventing for to amuse himself! Do you know,
Ma'am, he thought stags had white tails like rabbits, and that 'twas only
when they wagged them so as to show, that you could shoot them. And he
thought that you pulled a salmon out o' th