_Enter_ JENNITING _and_ CURDS.
JEN. Was he a butcher, say you?
CURDS. Ay, and called me his pretty lamb and his sweetbread;
told me he would meet me here two hours ago, and promised me
mountains; but bid me I should not tell you on't.
JEN. They are mere rogues, very jugglers; they have cheated us
both. Just so did the shoemaker do to me.
CURDS. He has got my box of milled sixpences and Harry groats:
the gilded scissors that were given me for a New Year's gift,
and my bodkin and thimble.
JEN. I would they might both feed upon nothing but rotten
apples, and be choked with pears!
CURDS. Or a piece of clout be left in the next fresh cheese
they eat, and strangle 'um; or a favourable spider drop into
the cream, and drown himself, that he may poison them.
_Enter_ DITTY _and_ BUDGET.
DITTY. 'Slife, lose [not] this opportunity; there she is; on,
I say, and I'll be your second. I warrant she had been dead
before this time, but that she smelt your breath hard by, or
else knew by sympathy that you were coming.
BUD. Did the letter work so strangely on her, are you sure? I
would not willingly venture my lips for a kiss, or my eyes for
a look.
DITTY. Why, I tell thee she was so nigh a dissolution when I
left her, that I thought to have found her in a sand-box, or
begged by some vintner to keep bottled wine in, before I could
return.
BUD. Well, I'll try, though she squeeze me into verjuice, and
stamp my bones into small coal, that they may be twice burnt.
[_Advances._] O my honeycomb, milksop Nancy, whiter than the
powder of chalk, and (like it) able to scour off the dirt of
sullied drabs, and paint them with a brightness as glustering
as thy own.
CURDS. Out, you sooty goblin, besmeared dolt! dost think I'll
couple with a negro, to bring forth magpies, half white and
half black? Take me for a bee, to knit at the sound of a brass
kettle or frying-pan? Bundle of charcoal, furred crock, dost
think I'll hang in thy pot-hook arm? Hence, or I'll beat thee
worse than the Bridewell crew does hemp!
DITTY. Ay, ay, read him the same lesson you conned me!
BUD. Sweet Mistress Curds, be not so sour. Good Ditty, stop her
mouth.
DITTY. Hold, hold, Nancy! He thought all women like pots of
ale, and that tinkers might call for 'um as freely as the
finest customer; this crab-tree lecture will teach him better
manners hereafter.
JEN. Ay, sister, do not foul your mouth any more with the
checker-faced scullion; let him go.
DITTY. Come, then, and shake hands; we'll fine him for's
sauciness, and his ransom shall be half a dozen at mine host
Welcome's. Come, come, you shall be friends, and I'll perfect
the reconciliation with a song.
BUD. Half a dozen! We'll score out all the chalk i' th' house,
and make the tapster fetch one o' th' city clerks to sum up the
reckoning.
JEN. Come, sister, let's go drink sorrows dry; and a woman's
anger should be like jack-weights--quickly up and quickly down.
[_Exeunt._