Urs. Fill again, you unlucky vermin!
Moon. ’Pray you be not angry, mistress, I’ll have it widen’d anon.
Urs. No, no, I shall e’en dwindle away to’t, ere the Fair be done, you think, now you have heated me: a poor vex’d thing I am, I feel myself dropping already as fast as I can; two stone o’ suet a day is my proportion. I can but hold life and soul together, with this, (here’s to you, Nightingale,) and a whiff of tobacco at most. Where’s my pipe now? not fill’d! thou arrant incubee.
Night. Nay, Ursula, thou’lt gall between the tongue and the teeth, with fretting, now.
Urs. How can I hope that ever he’ll discharge his place of trust, tapster, a man of reckoning under me, that remembers nothing I say to him? [Exit Nightingale.] but look to’t, sirrah, you were best. Three-pence a pipe-full, I will have made, of all my whole half-pound of tobacco, and a quarter of pound of colt’s-foot mixt with it too, to itch it out. I that have dealt so long in the fire, will not be to seek in smoke, now. Then six and twenty shillings a barrel I will advance on my beer, and fifty shillings a hundred on my bottle-ale; I have told you the ways how to raise it. Froth your cans well in the filling, at length, rogue, and jog your bottles o’ the buttock, sirrah, then skink out the first glass ever, and drink with all companies, though you be sure to be drunk; you’ll misreckon the better, and be less ashamed on’t. But your true trick, rascal, must be, to be ever busy, and mistake away the bottles and cans, in haste, before they be half drunk off, and never hear any body call, (if they should chance to mark you,) till you have brought fresh, and be able to forswear them. Give me a drink of ale.
Over. This is the very womb and bed of enormity! gross as herself! this must all down for enormity, all, every whit on’t. [Aside.
[Knocking within.
Urs. Look who’s there, sirrah: five shillings a pig is my price, at least; if it be a sow pig, sixpence more; if she be a great-bellied wife, and long for’t, sixpence more for that.
Over. O tempora! O mores! I would not have lost my discovery of this one grievance, for my place, and worship o’ the bench. How is the poor subject abused here! Well, I will fall in with her, and with her Mooncalf, and win out wonders of enormity. [Comes forward.]—By thy leave, goodly woman, and the fatness of the Fair, oily as the king’s constable’s lamp, and shining as his shooing-horn! hath thy ale virtue, or thy beer strength, that the tongue of man may be tickled, and his palate pleased in the morning? Let thy pretty nephew here go search and see.
Urs. What new roarer is this?