ILF.  How no acquaintance?  Angels guard me from thy company.  I tell thee, Wentloe, thou art not worthy to wear gilt spurs[330], clean linen, nor good clothes.

WEN.  Why, for God’s sake?

ILF.  By this hand, thou art not a man fit to table at an ordinary, keep knights company to bawdy-houses, nor beggar thy tailor.

WEN.  Why, then, I am free from cheaters, clear from the pox, and escape curses.

ILF.  Why, dost thou think there is any Christians in the world?

WEN.  Ay, and Jews too, brokers, puritans, and sergeants.

ILF.  Or dost thou mean to beg after charity, that goes in a cold suit already, that thou talkest thou hast no acquaintance here?  I tell thee, Wentloe, thou canst not live on this side of the world, feed well, drink tobacco[331], and be honoured into the presence, but thou must be acquainted with all sorts of men; ay, and so far in too, till they desire to be more acquainted with thee.

BAR.  True, and then you shall be accounted a gallant of good credit.

    Enter CLOWN.

ILF.  But stay, here is a scrape-trencher arrived: 
How now, blue-bottle,[332] are you of the house?

CLOWN.  I have heard of many black-jacks, sir, but never of a blue-bottle.

ILF.  Well, sir, are you of the house?

CLOWN.  No, sir, I am twenty yards without, and the house stands without me.

BAR.  Prythee, tell’s who owes[333] this building?

CLOWN.  He that dwells in it, sir.

ILF.  Who dwells in it, then?

CLOWN.  He that owes it.

ILF.  What’s his name?

CLOWN.  I was none of his god-father.

ILF.  Does Master Scarborow lie here?

CLOWN.  I’ll give you a rhyme for that, sir—­
Sick men may lie, and dead men in their graves. 
Few else do lie abed at noon, but drunkards, punks, and knaves.

ILF.  What am I the better for thy answer?

CLOWN.  What am I the better for thy question?

ILF.  Why, nothing.

CLOWN.  Why, then, of nothing comes nothing.

    Enter SCARBOROW.

WEN.  ’Sblood, this is a philosophical fool.

CLOWN.  Then I, that am a fool by art, am better than you, that are fools by nature. [Exit.

SCAR.  Gentlemen, welcome to Yorkshire.

ILF.  And well-encountered, my little villain of fifteen hundred a year.  ’Sfoot, what makest thou here in this barren soil of the North, when thy honest friends miss thee at London?

SCAR.  Faith, gallants, ’tis the country where my father lived, where first I saw the light, and where I am loved.

ILF.  Loved! ay, as courtiers love usurers, and that is just as long as they lend them money.  Now, dare I lay—­

WEN.  None of your land, good knight, for that is laid to mortgage already.

ILF.  I dare lay with any man, that will take me up.