SCENE VI.

_Enter_ GUM, _a tooth-drawer_.

GUM. Have you any corns upon your feet or toes? any teeth to draw? O, for a flood now or a whole year of rain, that every step may be up to the ankles in water, and cover every toe with a corn! May the shoemakers make all their shoes too strait, that they may pinch the sore-toed miser, and at every tread put him in mind of work for the corn-cutter! May the toothache be an hereditary disease, and prove infectious, or so many aldermen be turned into marble that the whole city may get rotten teeth with eating of sugar-plums and sweetmeats at their funerals.

_Enter_ DITTY.

DITTY. _The Seven Wise Men of Gotam_, _a Hundred Merry Tales_, _Scoggin's Jests_, or _A Book of Prayers and Graces for Young Children_.

GUM. What news-books, Ditty? Any proclamations that they must forfeit all their toes that have no corns, or that they must never eat good victuals that have not the toothache? Are red mufflers and slashed shoes come into fashion? They are as sure signs of the ache of teeth and toes as a red lattice of an alehouse.

DITTY. No, truly, Master Gum, I have none of these books, but I have as good. I have very strange news from beyond seas.

GUM. What is't? Do they want corn-cutters or tooth-drawers? prythee, let's hear it.

DITTY. The King of Morocco has got the black jaundice, and the Duke of Westphalia is sick of the swine-pox with eating bacon; the Moors increase daily, and the King of Cyprus mourns for the Duke of Saxony, that is dead of the stone; and Presbyter John is advanced to Zealand; the sea ebbs and flows but twice in four-and-twenty hours, and the moon has changed but once the last month.

GUM. Hold, hold! here's enough to tire the dove's neck, before she gets home.

_Enter_ BUDGET.

BUD. Well, I must strike whilst the iron's hot. Good Vulcan, be assistant, and grant that some spark of love may be kindled in her heart, and that I may with my compliments, as with the bellows of rhetoric, blow the coals of good-will, and with my forked arguments stir up the fire of affection in her! I have been filing my nose and anviling down my chin this two days, and yet just now there was scarce room enough for her sweet lips and mine to meet. She calls me Vulcan and Cyclops, and says I shall be hanged up for the sign of the _Black Boy_. But 'tis no matter. It may be, when she calls me Vulcan, she would have me make her my Venus!

DITTY. Who is this trough that he is about to run away with?

BUD. Well, I'll try both ways.

DITTY. How now, Budget? Can you sing your ballad yet? Come, are you perfect?

BUD. Not yet, Ditty; but is't to the tune o' th' _Bleeding Heart_, do you say?

DITTY. Ay, ay; but what makes you so pale, Budget? There's a cup of ale at mine host Welcome's will make your nose of another colour.

BUD. O Ditty, there is a nail knocked into my heart! It pricks, it pricks.

GUM. Why, if you can't wrench it out, we'll send for a smith.

DITTY. Has Cupid played the joiner with you, then? Who is't he has fastened to your heart with that nail? What metal is she made of, that you cannot hammer her?

BUD. It is the city's beauty!

DITTY. The city's beauty? who's that? One of my lord major's spaniels?

GUM. I knew a bitch of that name was a very pretty dog, and would fetch and carry as nimbly as any porter in the town.

BUD. What, villain, do you make a puppy of me! I'll kick you into glove-dogs, you mongrels, hell-hounds, whelps! [_Kicks them._

DITTY. Hold, good Budget, a jest is but a jest; I spoke but in jest.

GUM. Nor I, indeed, Master Budget.

BUD. Then I kicked you but in jest.

GUM. Ay, ay, sir, we take it so; you must think, if it had been in earnest, though it had been the best man i' th' land, he had kicked his last.

BUD. Had he so, slave?

GUM. Yes, when he had done kicking.

DIT. Good Budget, be pacified, and we'll recompense the injury we have done you with our forwardness to promote your desires and translation out of the circle of love into the wedding-ring.

BUD. Thanks, kind Ditty; walk along with me, and I will show thee the sweet empress of my heart. I am appeased. [_Exeunt._