SANDFORD
    You well-fed and unprofitable grooms,
    Maintained for state, not use;
    You lazy feasters at another’s cost,
    That eat like maggots into an estate,
    And do as little work,
    Being indeed but foul excrescences,
    And no just parts in a well-order’d family;
    You base and rascal imitators,
    Who act up to the height your master’s vices,
    But cannot read his virtues in your bond: 
    Which of you, as I enter’d, spake of betraying? 
    Was it you, or you, or, thin-face, was it you?

    MARTIN
    Whom does he call thin-face?

    SANDFORD
    No prating, loon, but tell me who he was,
    That I may brain the villain with my staff,
    That seeks Sir Walter’s life? 
    You miserable men,
    With minds more slavish than your slave’s estate,
    Have you that noble bounty so forgot,
    Which took you from the looms, and from the ploughs,
    Which better had ye follow’d, fed ye, cloth’d ye,
    And entertain’d ye in a worthy service,
    Where your best wages was the world’s repute,
    That thus ye seek his life, by whom ye live? 
    Have you forgot too,
    How often in old times
    Your drunken mirths have stunn’d day’s sober ears,
    Carousing full cups to Sir Walter’s health?—­
    Whom now ye would betray, but that he lies
    Out of the reach of your poor treacheries. 
    This learn from me,
    Our master’s secret sleeps with trustier tongues,
    Than will unlock themselves to carls like you. 
    Go, get you gone, you knaves.  Who stirs? this staff
    Shall teach you better manners else.

ALL
Well, we are going.

SANDFORD And quickly too, ye had better, for I see Young mistress Margaret coming this way. (Exeunt all but Sandford.)

Enter Margaret, as in a fright, pursued by a Gentleman,
who, seeing Sandford, retires muttering a curse. 
Sandford, Margaret.

SANDFORD
Good-morrow to my fair mistress.  ’Twas a chance
I saw you, lady, so intent was I
On chiding hence these graceless serving-men,
Who cannot break their fast at morning meals
Without debauch and mis-timed riotings. 
This house hath been a scene of nothing else
But atheist riot and profane excess,
Since my old master quitted all his rights here.

    MARGARET
    Each day I endure fresh insult from the scorn
    Of Woodvil’s friends, the uncivil jests,
    And free discourses, of the dissolute men,
    That haunt this mansion, making me their mirth.

    SANDFORD
    Does my young master know of these affronts?