SIS.  May I believe you?

ILF.  In troth you may: 
Your life’s my life, your death my dying-day.

SIS.  Sir, the commendations I have received from Butler of your birth and worth, together with the judgment of mine own eye, bids me believe and love you.

ILF.  O, seal it with a kiss.  Bless’d hour! my life had never joy till this.

    Enter WENTLOE and BARTLEY beneath.

BAR.  Hereabout is the house, sure.

WEN.  We cannot mistake it; for here’s the sign of the Wolf, and the bay-window.

    Enter BUTLER above.

BUT.  What, so close?  ’Tis well I have shifted away your uncles, mistress.  But see the spite of Sir Francis! if yon same couple of smell-smocks, Wentloe and Bartley, have not scented after us.

ILF.  A pox on them! what shall we do then, butler?

BUT.  What, but be married straight, man?

ILF.  Ay, but how, butler?

BUT.  Tut, I never fail at a dead lift; for, to perfect your bliss, I have provided you a priest.

ILF.  Where? prythee, butler, where?

BUT.  Where but beneath in her chamber?  I have filled his hands with coin, and he shall tie you fast with words; he shall close your hands in one, and then do clap yourself into her sheets, and spare not.

ILF.  O sweet!

      [Exit ILFORD with SCARBOROW’S SISTER.[415]

BUT.  Down, down, ’tis the only way for you to get up. 
Thus in this task for others’ good I toil,
And she, kind gentlewoman, weds herself,
Having been scarcely woo’d, and ere her thoughts
Have learn’d to love him that, being her husband,
She may relieve her brothers in their wants;
She marries him to help her nearest kin: 
I make the match, and hope it is no sin.

WEN.  ’Sfoot, it is scurvy walking for us so near the two Counters; would he would come once!

BAR.  Mass, he’s yonder:  now, Butler.

BUT.  O gallants, are you here?  I have done wonders for you, commended you to the gentlewomen who, having taken note of your good legs and good faces, have a liking to you; meet me beneath.

BOTH.  Happy butler.

BUT.  They are yours, and you are theirs; meet me beneath, I say.

[Exeunt WENTLOE and BARTLEY.

By this they are wed; ay, and perhaps have bedded. 
Now follows whether, knowing she is poor,
He’ll swear he lov’d her, as he swore before.

[Exit BUTLER.

ACT V.

    Enter ILFORD with SCARBOROW’S SISTER.

ILF.  Ho, sirrah, who would have thought it?  I perceive now a woman may be a maid, be married, and lose her maidenhead, and all in half an hour.  And how dost like me now, wench?

SIS.  As doth befit your servant and your wife,
That owe you love and duty all my life.