SCENE XII.

_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._