ARDEN: How, sir, I beg?
HOMEWARE: How, when a young man sees the index to himself in everything spoken!
ARDEN: That might have the look. I did rightly in coming to you, sir.
HOMEWARE: ‘Her uncle Homeware’?
ARDEN: You read through us all, sir.
HOMEWARE: It may interest you to learn that you are the third of the gentlemen commissioned to consult the lady’s uncle Homeware.
ARDEN: The third.
HOMEWARE: Yes, she is pursued. It could hardly be otherwise. Her attractions are acknowledged, and the house is not a convent. Yet, Mr. Arden, I must remind you that all of you are upon an enterprise held to be profane by the laws of this region. Can you again forget that Astraea is a widow?
ARDEN: She was a wife two months; she has been a widow two years.
HOMEWARE: The widow of the great and venerable Professor Towers is not to measure her widowhood by years. His, from the altar to the tomb. As it might be read, a one day’s walk!