Winw. Where is she, stirring yet?
Lit. Stirring! yes, and studying an old elder come from Banbury, a suitor that puts in here at meal tide, to praise the painful brethren, or pray that the sweet singers may be restored; says a grace as long as his breath lasts him! Some time the spirit is so strong with him, it gets quite out of him, and then my mother, or Win, are fain to fetch it again with malmsey or aqua cœlestis.
Mrs. Lit. Yes, indeed, we have such a tedious life with him for his diet, and his clothes too! he breaks his buttons, and cracks seams at every saying he sobs out.
Lit. He cannot abide my vocation, he says.
Mrs. Lit. No; he told my mother, a proctor was a claw of the beast, and that she had little less than committed abomination in marrying me so as she has done.
Lit. Every line, he says, that a proctor writes, when it comes to be read in the bishop’s court, is a long black hair, kemb’d out of the tail of Antichrist.
Winw. When came this proselyte?
Lit. Some three days since.
Enter QUARLOUS.
Quar. O sir, have you ta’en soil here? It’s well a man may reach you after three hours’ running yet! What an unmerciful companion art thou, to quit thy lodging at such ungentlemanly hours! none but a scattered covey of fidlers, or one of these rag-rakers in dunghills, or some marrow-bone man at most, would have been up when thou wert gone abroad, by all description. I pray thee what ailest thou, thou canst not sleep? hast thou thorns in thy eye-lids, or thistles in thy bed?