AMIN.  I wail in woe, I plunge in pain.[15] [Aside.]

BRA.  When next I find him here, I’ll hang him up,
Like a dried sausage, in the chimney’s top: 
That stock-fish, that poor John, that gut of men!

AMIN.  O, that I were at home again! [Aside.]

BRA.  When he comes next, turn him into the streets. 
Now, come, let’s dance the shaking of the sheets.

[Exeunt MISTRESS MARY and BRABO.

AMIN. Qui, quae, quod! 
Hence, boist’rous bill! come, gentle rod! 
Had not grimalkin stamp’d and star’d,
Aminadab had little car’d;
Or if, instead of this brown bill,
I had kept my Mistress Virga still,
And he upon another’s back,
His points untruss’d, his breeches slack;
My countenance he should not dash,
For I am expert in the lash. 
But my sweet lass my love doth fly,
Which shall make me by poison die.
Per fidem, I will rid my life
Either by poison, sword, or knife.

[Exit.

ACT III., SCENE I.

A Room in Young Arthur’s House.

Enter MISTRESS ARTHUR and PIPKIN.

MRS ART.  Sirrah! when saw you your master?

PIP.  Faith, mistress, when I last look’d upon him.

MRS ART.  And when was that?

PIP.  When I beheld him.

MRS ART.  And when was that?

PIP.  Marry, when he was in my sight, and that was yesterday; since when I saw not my master, nor looked on my master, nor beheld my master, nor had any sight of my master.

MRS ART.  Was he not at my father-in-law’s?

PIP.  Yes, marry, was he.

MRS ART.  Didst thou not entreat him to come home?

PIP.  How should I, mistress? he came not there to-day.

MRS ART.  Didst thou not say he was there?

PIP.  True, mistress, he was there? but I did not tell ye when; he hath been there divers times, but not of late.

MRS ART.  About your business! here I’ll sit and wait
His coming home, though it be ne’er so late. 
Now once again go look him at the ’Change,
Or at the church with Sir Aminadab. 
’Tis told me they use often conference;
When that is done, get you to school again.

PIP.  I had rather play the truant at home, than go seek my master at school:  let me see, what age am I? some four and twenty, and how have I profited?  I was five years learning to crish cross[16] from great A, and five years longer coming to F; there I stuck some three years, before I could come to Q; and so, in process of time, I came to e per se e, and com per se, and tittle; then I got to a, e, i, o, u; after, to Our Father; and, in the sixteenth year of my age, and the fifteenth of my going to school, I am in good time gotten to a noun, By the same token there my hose went down; Then I got to a verb, There I began first to have a beard; Then I came to iste, ista, istud, There my master whipped me till he fetched the blood, And so forth:  so that now I am become the greatest scholar in the school, for I am bigger than two or three of them.  But I am gone; farewell, mistress!