Joe: You mistake me, Captain. My father is the King of England. I am but the Prince of Wales.
Sailor Captain: Alas, sire, we bring you heavy news. Your Royal Father, the King of England, has been killed, fighting gloriously on the soil of France.
Joe: Bear with me. My grief has leaped the channel. My thought is a silent mourner at my father's grave. Shall a King sink to the measure of a mound of turf for the tread of a peasant's foot? Where is now the ermine robe, the glistening crown, the harness of a fighting hour, the sceptre that marked the giddy office, the voice, the flashing eye that stirred a coward to bravery, the iron gauntlet shaking in the pallid face of France? All—all covered by a spadeful of country earth. Captain, has Calais fallen to our army's siege? Are the French lilies plucked for England's boutoniere?
Sailor Captain: Calais has fallen.
Joe: Then God be praised even in this hard hour. By heaven's help I throw off the idle practice of my youth. The empty tricks and trivial habits of the careless years, I renounce them all. A wind has scoured the sullen clouds of youth. My past has been a ragged garment, stained with heedless hours. Tonight I cast it off, like a coat that is out at elbow. My father henceforth lives in me.
(Meg, at her entrance, has sniffed the wasted grog. Her nose, surer than a hazel wand, inclines above the hearth. She bends to the lovely puddle. She employs and tastes her dripping finger—covertly, with mannerly regard to the Prince's rhetoric—sucking in secret his good health and happy returns, so to speak. The liquor warms her tongue—not to drunkenness, but to ease and comfort. The hearth-stone is her tavern chair.)
Meg: (not boisterously—with just a flip of her trickling finger, as if it were a foaming cup). Hooray! I wants ter be the first, yer Majesty, ter swear allegiance to yer throne. I saw yer future in the glass. Ol' Meg knowed yer, like she had rocked yer in the cradle. I told yer I would come in yer hour o' danger. It was me reached through the winder fer the gun ter save yer. It was me whistle that yer heard, dearie, hurryin' up the sailormen as Betsy went ter fetch.
Joe: Thanks my good woman. We grant you a pension for your love.
(She quests back to her pool of grog. She finds a spoon. She sits to the delicious salvage, with back against the chimney and woolen legs out-stretched. Speeches to her are nothing now. We cannot expect her help in winding up our play. The burden falls on Joe. We must be patient through a sentimental page or two.)
Joe: Ha! My velvet cloak, which I left at Castle Crag when I laid aside the Prince and took disguise. These unintentioned ruffians by their dirty jest have clothed me to my office.