SCENE IV.

_A Room in_ OLIVIA'S _House_.

_Enter_ SIR ANDREW, FABIAN, _and_ SIR TOBY.

_Sir And._ No, faith, I'll not stay a jot longer.

_Sir To._ Thy reason, dear venom, give thy reason.

_Fab._ You must needs yield your reason, Sir Andrew.

_Sir And._ Marry, I saw your niece do more favours to the Count's serving man, than ever she bestowed upon me; I saw't this moment in the garden.

_Sir To._ Did she see thee the while, old boy? tell me that.

_Sir And._ As plain as I see you now.

_Fab._ This was a great argument of love in her toward you.

_Sir And._ 'Slight! will you make an ass o' me?

_Fab._ I will prove it legitimate, sir, upon the oaths of judgment and reason.

_Sir To._ And they have been grand jury-men, since before Noah was a sailor.

_Fab._ She did show favour to the youth in your sight, only to exasperate you, to awake your dormouse valour, to put fire in your heart, and brimstone in your liver: you should then have accosted her; and with some excellent jests, fire-new from the mint, you should have bang'd the youth into dumbness. This was look'd for at your hand, and this was baulk'd: the double gilt of this opportunity you let time wash off, and you are now sailed into the north of my lady's opinion: where you will hang like an icicle on a Dutchman's beard, unless you do redeem it by some laudable attempt, either of valour or policy.

_Sir And._ An it be any way, it must be with valour; for policy I hate.

_Sir To._ Why, then, build me thy fortunes upon the basis of valour. Challenge me the Count's youth to fight with him; hurt him in eleven places; my niece shall take note of it: and assure thyself, there is no love-broker in the world can more prevail in man's commendation with woman, than report of valour.

_Fab._ There is no way but this, Sir Andrew.

_Sir And._ Will either of you bear me a challenge to him?

_Sir To._ Go write it in a martial hand; be curst and brief; it is no matter how witty, so it be eloquent, and full of invention: taunt him with the license of ink: if thou _thou'st_ him some thrice, it shall not be amiss; and as many _lies_ as will lie in thy sheet of paper; although the sheet were big enough for the bed of Ware in England, set 'em down; go, about it. Let there be gall enough in thy ink; though thou write with a goose-pen, no matter: About it.

_Sir And._ Where shall I find you?

_Sir To._ We'll call thee at the _cubiculo:_ Go.

[_Exit_ SIR ANDREW.

_Fab._ This is a dear manakin to you, Sir Toby.

_Sir To._ I have been dear to him, lad; some two thousand strong, or so.

_Fab._ We shall have a rare letter from him: but you'll not deliver it?

_Sir To._ Never trust me then; and by all means stir on the youth to an answer. I think, oxen and wainropes cannot hale them together. For Andrew, if he were opened, and you find so much blood in his liver as will clog the foot of a flea, I'll eat the rest of the anatomy.

_Fab._ And his opposite, the youth, bears in his visage no great presage of cruelty.

_Sir To._ Look, where the youngest wren of nine comes.

_Enter_ MARIA.

_Mar._ If you desire the spleen, and will laugh yourselves into stitches, follow me: yon gull Malvolio is turned heathen, a very renegado; for there is no Christian, that means to be saved by believing rightly, can ever believe such impossible passages of grossness. He's in yellow stockings.

_Sir To._ And cross-gartered?

_Mar._ Most villainously; like a pedant that keeps a school i' the church.--I have dogg'd him, like his murderer: He does obey every point of the letter that I dropped to betray him. He does smile his face into more lines, than are in a map: you have not seen such a thing as 'tis.

_Sir To._ Come, bring us, bring us where he is.

[_Exeunt._

ACT THE FOURTH.