Enter WENTLOE.

WEN.  Frank, news that will make thee fat, Frank.

ILF.  Prythee, rather give me somewhat will keep me lean; I have no mind yet to take physic.

WEN.  Master Scarborow is married, man.

ILF.  Then heaven grant he may (as few married men do) make much of his wife.

WEN.  Why? wouldst have him love her, let her command all, and make her his master?

ILF.  No, no; they that do so, make not much of their wives, but give them their will, and its the marring of them.

    Enter BARTLEY.

BAR.  Honest Frank, valorous Frank, a portion of thy wit, but to help us in this enterprise, and we may walk London streets, and cry pish at the serjeants.

ILF.  You may shift out one term, and yet die in the Counter.  These are the scabs now that hang upon honest Job.  I am Job, and these are the scurvy scabs [aside]; but what’s this your pot seethes over withal?

BAR.  Master Scarborough is married, man.

WEN.  He has all his land in his own hand.

BAR.  His brother’s and sister’s portions.

WEN.  Besides four thousand pounds in ready money with his wife.

ILF.  A good talent,[361] by my faith; it might help many gentlemen to pay their tailors, and I might be one of them.

WEN.  Nay, honest Frank, hast thou found a trick for him? if thou hast not, look, here’s a line to direct thee.  First draw him into bands[362] for money, then to dice for it; then take up stuff at the mercer’s; straight to a punk with it; then mortgage his land, and be drunk with that; so with them and the rest, from an ancient gentleman make him a young beggar.

ILF.  What a rogue this is, to read a lecture to me—­and mine own lesson too, which he knows I have made perfect to nine hundred fourscore and nineteen!  A cheating rascal! will teach me!—­I, that have made them, that have worn a spacious park, lodge, and all on their backs[363] this morning, been fain to pawn it afore night!  And they that have stalked like a huge elephant, with a castle on their necks, and removed that to their own shoulders in one day, which their fathers built up in seven years—­been glad by my means, in so much time as a child sucks, to drink bottle-ale, though a punk pay for’t.  And shall this parrot instruct me?

WEN.  Nay, but, Frank—­

ILF.  A rogue that hath fed upon me and the fruit of my wit, like pullen[364] from a pantler’s chippings, and now I have put him into good clothes to shift two suits in a day, that could scarce shift a patched shirt once in a year, and say his prayers when he had it—­hark, how he prates!

WEN.  Besides, Frank, since his marriage, he stalks me like a cashiered captain discontent; in, which melancholy the least drop of mirth, of which thou hast an ocean, will make him and all his ours for ever.

ILF.  Says mine own rogue so?  Give me thy hand then; we’ll do’t, and there’s earnest. [Strikes him.] ’Sfoot, you chittiface, that looks worse than a collier through a wooden window, an ape afraid of a whip, or a knave’s head, shook seven years in the weather upon London Bridge[365]—­do you catechise me?