Pleas. For all the rudeness of your language, I am resolved to know upon what voyage you are bound; your privateer of love, you Argier’s man, that cruize up and down for prize in the Straitsmouth; which of the vessels would you snap now?

Trick. We are both under safe convoy, madam; a lover and a husband.

Pleas. Nay, for your part, you are notably guarded, I confess; but keepers have their rooks, as well as gamesters; but they only venture under them till they pick up a sum, and then push for themselves.

Wood. [Aside.] A plague of her suspicions; they’ll ruin me on that side.

Pleas. So; let but little minx go proud, and the dogs in Covent-Garden have her in the wind immediately; all pursue the scent.

Trick. Not to a boarding-house, I hope?

Pleas. If they were wise, they would rather go to a brothel-house; for there most mistresses have left behind them their maiden-heads, of blessed memory:  and those, which would not go off in that market, are carried about by bawds, and sold at doors, like stale flesh in baskets.  Then, for your honesty, or justness, as you call it, to your keepers, your kept-mistress is originally a punk; and let the cat be changed into a lady never so formally, she still retains her natural property of mousing.

Mrs. Brain. You are very sharp upon the mistresses; but I hope you’ll spare the wives.

Pleas. Yes, as much as your husbands do after the first month of marriage; but you requite their negligence in household-duties, by making them husbands of the first head, ere the year be over.

Wood. [Aside.] She has me there, too!

Pleas. And as for you, young gallant—­

Wood. Hold, I beseech you! a truce for me.

Pleas. In troth, I pity you; for you have undertaken a most difficult task,—­to cozen two women, who are no babies in their art:  if you bring it about, you perform as much as he that cheated the very lottery.

Wood. Ladies, I am sorry this should happen to you for my sake:  She is in a raging fit, you see; ’tis best withdrawing, till the spirit of prophecy has left her.

Trick. I’ll take shelter in my chamber,—­whither, I hope, he’ll have the grace to follow me. [Aside.

Mrs Brain. And now I think on’t, I have some letters to dispatch.
                          [Exit TRICK. and MRS BRAIN. severally.

Pleas. Now, good John among the maids, how mean you to bestow your time?  Away to your study, I advise you; invoke your muses, and make madrigals upon absence.

Wood. I would go to China, or Japan, to be rid of that impetuous clack of yours.  Farewell, thou legion of tongues in one woman!

Pleas. Will you not stay, sir? it may be I have a little business with you.