“Give me another handful, sweetheart, and I'll tell thee.”
“There! I said he was too handsome for a woman.”
“Ser Gerard, they have found me out,” observed the Epicaene, calmly cracking an almond.
The libertines vowed it was impossible, and all glared at the goddess like a battery. But Vanucci struck in, and reminded the gaping gazers of a recent controversy, in which they had, with a unanimity not often found among dunces, laughed Gerard and him to scorn, for saying that men were as beautiful as women in a true artist's eye.
“Where are ye now? This is my boy Andrea. And you have all been down on your knees to him. Ha! ha! But oh, my little ladies, when he lectured you and flung your stibium, your cerussa, and your purpurissum back in your faces, 'tis then I was like to burst; a grinds my colours. Ha! ha! he! he! he! ho!”
“The little impostor! Duck him!”
“What for, signors?” cried Andrea, in dismay, and lost his rich carnation.
But the females collected round him, and vowed nobody should harm a hair of his head.
“The dear child! How well his pretty little saucy ways become him.”
“Oh, what eyes and teeth!”