ACT THE FIRST.
SCENE I.
An open Country, near Hexham, in Northumberland; with a distant View of Henry the Sixth's Camp. Time Day-break.
Enter Adeline, in Man's Habit and Accoutrements.
Adeline. Heigho! Six dark and weary miles, and not yet at the camp. How tediously affliction paces!—Come, Gregory! come on. Why, how you lag behind!—Poor simple soul! what cares has he to weigh him down? Oh, yes,—he has served me from my cradle; and his plain honest heart feels for his mistress's fallen fortunes, and is heavy.—Come, my good fellow, come!
Enter Gregory.
Gregory. Mercy on us, how my poor legs do ache!
Adeline. What, with only six miles this morning?—Fie!
Gregory. Six!—sixteen, if we've gone an inch; my feet are cut to pieces. A man may as well do penance, with pease in his shoes, as trudge over these confounded roads in Northumberland. I used to wonder, when we were at home, in the south, where it is as smooth as a bowling-green, what the labourers did with all the loose stones they carried off the highways; but now, I find, they come and shoot their rubbish in the northern counties. I wish we had never come into them, with all my heart!