Aldo. Unconscionable villain, to cozen you in your own calling!

Mrs Term. When he loses upon the square, he comes home zoundsing and blooding; first beats me unmercifully, and then squeezes me to the last penny.  He has used me so, that, Gad forgive me, I could almost forswear my trade.  The rogue starves me too:  He made me keep Lent last year till Whitsuntide, and out-faced me with oaths it was but Easter.  And what mads me most, I carry a bastard of the rogue’s in my belly; and now he turns me off, and will not own it.

Mrs Over. Lord, how it quops! you are half a year gone, madam.—­
                                      [Laying her hand on her belly.

Mrs Term. I feel the young rascal kicking already, like his father.—­Oh, there is an elbow thrusting out:  I think, in my conscience, he is palming and topping in my belly; and practising for a livelihood, before he comes into the world.

Aldo. Geoffery, set her down in the register, that I may provide her a mid-wife, and a dry and wet nurse:  When you are up again, as heaven send you a good hour, we will pay him off at law, i’faith.  You have him under black and white, I hope?

Mrs Term. Yes, I have a note under his hand for two hundred pounds.

Aldo. A note under his hand! that is a chip in porridge; it is just nothing.—­Look, Geoffery, to the figure 12, for old half-shirts for childbed linen.

  Enter Mrs HACKNEY.

Hack. O, madam Termagant, are you here?  Justice, father Aldo, justice!

Aldo. Why, what is the matter, daughter Hackney?

Hack. She has violated the law of nations; for yesterday she inveigled my own natural cully from me, a married lord, and made him false to my bed, father.

Term. Come, you are an illiterate whore.  He is my lord now; and, though you call him fool, it is well known he is a critic, gentlewoman.  You never read a play in all your life; and I gained him by my wit, and so I’ll keep him.

Hack. My comfort is, I have had the best of him; he can take up no more, till his father dies:  And so, much good may do you with my cully, and my clap into the bargain.

Aldo. Then there is a father for your child, my lord’s son and heir by Mr Caster.  But henceforward, to preserve peace betwixt you, I ordain, that you shall ply no more in my daughter Hackney’s quarters:  You shall have the city, from White-Chapel to Temple-Bar, and she shall have to Covent-Garden downwards:  At the play-houses, she shall ply the boxes, because she has the better face; and you shall have the pit, because you can prattle best out of a vizor mask.

Mrs Pad. Then all friends, and confederates.  Now let us have father Aldo’s delight, and so adjourn the house.

Aldo. Well said, daughter.—­Lift up your voices, and sing like nightingales, you tory rory jades.  Courage, I say; as long as the merry pence hold out, you shall none of you die in Shoreditch.