_Enter_ DITTY.
DITTY. Well, if ever I carry love-letters again, may they make
a love-letter of me; turn my skin to paper, my skull to an
inkhorn, and make a pen of my nose; it will be excellent for
a fast hand, for it runs continually, and is so moist that
it will write without ink! Nay, if ever I thrust myself into
wedding businesses again, may a piece of match be my bane;
may the bridegroom wring my ears off, hang me in the bride's
garter, or drown me in the sack posset; and if he bury me,
bestow this threadbare epitaph--
_Here lieth Tom Ditty under this stone,_
_That carried love-letters; reader, go on,--_
_But stay! wouldst thou know the cause of his death?_
_Th' long-winded letter put him out of breath._
The next epistle I carry for Budget, he shall carry himself;
I'll not be his post, to be her beating-block too. Pox on's
kettledrum! 'tis good for nothing but to call the moon out
of an eclipse, and he'll serve for nought neither, but a
chimney-sweeper's shadow, or bugbear to fright froward
children. I'll have some revenge on him, and deliver him up
into her hands. If she do not sufficiently punish him, I'll
forgive him.
_Enter_ BUDGET.
DITTY. O, here comes the chimney, the man of soot, the picture
of smoke and cinders!
BUD. O Ditty! I see by thy face there's ill news.
DITTY. Ay, pox on't! I was set upon yonder by a company of
women, and had like to have been scolded into a cripple for
singing _Room for Cuckolds_ t'other day.
BUD. But what said my Nancy? Did she smile, and say that all
her denials were maiden's nays? Is she softened, and will she
now let me taste her strawberry lips willingly?
DITTY. Yes, and give you cream to 'um too. Why, she is almost
mad for you, and has bespoke a place in Bedlam already. If you
do not go quickly and recover her, she'll either be turned into
a kettle with grief, or melt into bell-metal, that she may be
made a posnet of. Nay, and desired me to tell you that if after
her transformation she chance ever to come under your hands to
be mended, she would desire you to use her gently, and that you
should know which was she, she had provided in her will that H.
L. may be set on her handle for Nancy Curdwell.
BUD. I will, I will; I'll mend her with sugar-nails and a
Naples biscuit-hammer. But is there no way to persuade her to
live still a woman? I would be loth to carry my wife at my
back, and have one with three legs.
DITTY. If you make haste, you may chance to come before she is
quite changed; you may save a leg, perhaps, or an arm of flesh
yet; but I believe the most part of her is brass already.
BUD. Good Ditty, go along with me; if she be a pot before I
come, I'll weep it full of tears, and then be boiled to death
in't. [_Exeunt._