Dall Glic:  (Coming in.) The King is greatly put out with all he went through, and the way the passion rose in him a while ago.

Nurse:  That he may be twenty times worse before he is better!  Showing such fury towards the innocent child the way he did!

Dall Glic:  The Queen has brought him to the grass plot for to give him his exercise, walking his seven steps east and west.

Nurse:  Hasn’t she great power over him to make him to that much?

Dall Glic:  I tell you I am in dread of her myself.  Some plan she has for making my two eyes equal.  I vexed her someway, and she got queer and humpy, and put a lip on herself, and said she would take me in hand.  I declare I never will have a minute’s ease thinking of it.

Nurse:  The King should have done his seven steps, for I hear her coming.

(Dall Glic goes to recess of window.)

Queen:  (Coming in.) Did you, Nurse, ever at any time turn and dress a dinner?

Nurse:  (Very stiff.) Indeed I never did.  Any house I ever was in there was a good kitchen and well attended, the Lord be praised!

Queen:  Ah, but just to be kind and to oblige the King.

Nurse:  Troth, the same King will wait long till he’ll see any dish I will ready for him!  I am not one that was reared between the flags and the oven in the corner of the one room!  To be a nurse to King’s children is my trade, and not to go stirring mashes, for hens or for humans!

Queen:  I heard a crafty woman lay down one time there was no way to hold a man, only by food and flattery.

Nurse:  Sure any mother of children walking the road could tell you that much.

Queen:  I went maybe too far urging him not to lessen so much food the way he did.  I only thought to befriend him.  But now he is someway upset and nothing will rightly smooth him but to be thinking upon his next meal; and what it will be I don’t know, unless the berries of the bush.

Dall Glic:  (Leaning out of the window.) Here!  Hi!  Come this way!

Queen:  Who are you calling to?

Dall Glic:  It is someone with the appearance of a cook.

Queen:  Are you saying it is a cook?  That now will put the King in great humour!

(Manus appears at the window.)

Nurse:  (Looking at him.) I wouldn’t hardly think he’d suit.  He has a sort of innocent look.  I wouldn’t say him to be a country lad.  I don’t know is he fitted to go readying meals for a royal family, and the King so wrathful if they do not please him as he is.  And as to the Princess Nu!  There to be the size of a hayseed of fat overhead on her broth, she’d fall in a dead faint.

Manus:  I’ll go on so.

Queen:  No, no.  Bring him in till I’ll take a look at him!