e water as soon as you'd hooked
him. And he thought that a haggis was made of a sheep's head boiled in
whisky. Oh, he's very innocent, Ma'am, if you get him where he's not
expecting you.

QUEEN. Well, Brown, there are some things you can teach him, I don't
doubt; and there are some things he can teach you. I'm sure he has taught
me a great deal.

J.B. Ay? It's a credit to ye both, then.

QUEEN. He lets me think for myself, Brown; and that's what so many of my
ministers would rather I didn't. They want me to be merely the receptacle
of their own opinions. No, Brown, that's what we Stewarts are never going
to do!

J.B. Nor would I, Ma'am, if I were in your shoes. But believe me, you can
do more, being a mere woman, so to speak, than many a king can do.

QUEEN. Yes; being a woman has its advantages, I know.

J.B. For you can get round 'em, Ma'am; and you can put 'em off; and you
can make it very awkward for them--very awkward--to have a difference of
opinion with you.

QUEEN (_good-humouredly_). You and I have had differences of opinion
sometimes, Brown.

J.B. True, Ma'am; that _has_ happened; I've known it happen. And I've
never regretted it, never! But the difference there is, Ma'am, that I'm
not your Prime Minister. Had I been--you'd 'a been more stiff about giving
in--naturally! Now there's Mr. Gladstone, Ma'am; I'm not denying he's a
great man; but he's got too many ideas for my liking, far too many! I'm
not against temperance any more than he is--put in its right place. But
he's got that crazy notion of "local option" in his mind; he's coming to
it, gradually. And he doesn't think how giving "local option," to them
that don't take the wide view of things, may do harm to a locality. You
must be wide in your views, else you do somebody an injustice.

QUEEN. Yes, Brown; and that is why I like being up in the hills, where the
views _are_ wide.

J.B. I put it this way, Ma'am. You come to a locality, and you find you
can't get served as you are accustomed to be served. Well! you don't go
there again, and you tell others not to go; and so the place gets a bad
name. I've a brother who keeps an inn down at Aberlochy on the coach
route, and he tells me that more than half his customers come from outside
the locality.

QUEEN. Of course; naturally!

J.B. Well now, Ma'am, it'll be for the bad locality to have half the
custom that comes to it turned away, because of local option! And believe
me, Ma'am, that's what