Dor. No, good Palamede, I must not be so injurious to your bride: 'Tis ill drawing from the bank to-day, when all your ready money is payable to-morrow.
Pala. A wife is only to have the ripe fruit, that falls of itself; but a wise man will always preserve a shaking for a mistress.
Dor. But a wife for the first quarter is a mistress.
Pala. But when the second comes—
Dor. When it does come, you are so given to variety, that you would make a wife of me in another quarter.
Pala. No, never, except I were married to you: married people can never oblige one another; for all they do is duty, and consequently there can be no thanks: But love is more frank and generous than he is honest; he's a liberal giver, but a cursed pay-master.
Dor. I declare I will have no gallant; but, if I would, he should never be a married man; a married man is but a mistress's half-servant, as a clergyman is but the king's half-subject: For a man to come to me that smells of the wife! 'Slife, I would as soon wear her old gown after her, as her husband. Pala. Yet 'tis a kind of fashion to wear a princess's cast shoes; you see the country ladies buy them, to be fine in them.
Dor. Yes, a princess's shoes may be worn after her, because they keep their fashion, by being so very little used; but generally a married man is the creature of the world the most out of fashion: his behaviour is dumpish; his discourse, his wife and family; his habit so much neglected, it looks as if that were married too; his hat is married, his peruke is married, his breeches are married,—and, if we could look within his breeches, we should find him married there too.
Pala. Am I then to be discarded for ever? pray do but mark how that word sounds: for ever! it has a very damn'd sound, Doralice.
Dor. Ay, for ever! it sounds as hellishly to me, as it can do to you, but there's no help for it.