Tho. You will go away. Whither will you go, and what can you do? I would as willingly go away as you, if I knew whither; but we have no acquaintance, no friends. Here we were born, and here we must die.
John. Look you, Tom, the whole kingdom is my native country as well as this town. You may as well say I must not go out of my house if it is on fire, as that I must not go out of the town I was born in when it is infected with the plague. I was born in England, and have a right to live in it if I can.
Tho. But you know every vagrant person may, by the laws of England, be taken up, and passed back to their last legal settlement.
John. But how shall they make me vagrant? I desire only to travel on upon my lawful occasions.
Tho. What lawful occasions can we pretend to travel, or rather wander, upon? They will not be put off with words.
John. Is not flying to save our lives a lawful occasion? And do they not all know that the fact is true? We cannot be said to dissemble.
Tho. But, suppose they let us pass, whither shall we go?
John. Anywhere to save our lives: it is time enough to consider that when we are got out of this town. If I am once out of this dreadful place, I care not where I go.
Tho. We shall be driven to great extremities. I know not what to think of it.
John. Well, Tom, consider of it a little.