PETER PLOD-ALL. 
Mistress Lelia, God be with you.

LELIA. 
Farewell, Peter. [Exit PETER. 
Thus lucre’s set in golden chair of state,
When learning’s bid stand by, and keeps aloof: 
This greedy humour fits my father’s vein,
Who gapes for nothing but for golden gain.

    Enter CHURMS.

NURSE. 
Mistress, take heed you speak nothing that will bear action, for here
comes Master Churms the pettifogger.

CHURMS.
Mistress Lelia, rest you merry:  what’s the reason you and your nurse
walk here alone?

LELIA. 
Because, sir, we desire no other company but our own.

CHURMS.
Would I were then your own, that I might keep you company.

NURSE. 
O sir, you and he that is her own are far asunder.

CHURMS.
But if she please, we may be nearer.

LELIA. 
That cannot be; mine own is nearer than myself: 
And yet myself, alas! am not mine own. 
Thoughts, fears, despairs, ten thousand dreadful dreams,
Those are mine own, and those do keep me company.

CHURMS.
Before God,
I must confess, your father is too cruel,
To keep you thus sequester’d from the world,
To spend your prime of youth thus in obscurity,
And seek to wed you to an idiot fool,
That knows not how to use himself: 
Could my deserts but answer my desires,
I swear by Sol, fair Phoebus’ silver eye,
My heart would wish no higher to aspire,
Than to be grac’d with Lelia’s love. 
By Jesus, I cannot play the dissembler,
And woo my love with courting ambages,
Like one whose love hangs on his smooth tongue’s end;
But, in a word, I tell the sum of my desires,
I love fair Lelia: 
By her my passions daily are increas’d;
And I must die, unless by Lelia’s love they be releas’d.

LELIA. 
Why, Master Churms, I had thought that you had been my father’s great
councillor in all these actions.

CHURMS.
Nay, damn me, if I be:  by heav’ns, sweet nymph, I am not!

NURSE.  Master Churms, you are one can do much with her father:  and if you love as you say, persuade him to use her more kindly, and give her liberty to take her choice; for these made marriages prove not well.

CHURMS.
I protest I will.

LELIA. 
So Lelia shall accept thee as her friend:—­
Meanwhile, nurse, let’s in: 
My long absence, I know, will make my father muse.

[Exeunt LELIA and NURSE.

CHURMS. So Lelia shall accept thee as her friend:—­who can but ruminate upon these words?  Would she had said, her love:  but ’tis no matter; first creep, and then go; now her friend:  the next degree is Lelia’s love.  Well, I’ll persuade her father to let her have a little more liberty.  But soft; I’ll none of that neither:  so the scholar may chance cosen me.  Persuade him to keep her in still:  and before she’ll