Pe. Out upon’t, I have less stomach to that than to the figs and raisins; I’ll out of town, though I sojourn with a friend of mine, for stay here I must not; my creditors have laid to arrest me, and I have no friend under heaven but my sword to bail me. 254
Qu. God’s me, knight, put ’hem in sufficient sureties, rather than let your sword bail you! Let ’hem take their choice, either the King’s Bench or the Fleet, or which of the two Counters they like best, for, by the Lord, I like none of ’hem.
Pe. Well, Frank, there is no jesting with my earnest necessity; thou know’st if I make not present money to further my voyage begun, all’s lost, and all I have laid out about it. 263
Qu. Why, then, sir, in earnest, if you can get your wise lady to set her hand to the sale of her inheritance,
the bloodhound, Security, will smell out ready money for you instantly.
Pe. There spake an angel: to bring her to which conformity, I must feign myself extremely amorous; and alleging urgent excuses for my stay behind, part with her as passionately as she would from her foisting hound.[50] 272
Qu. You have the sow by the right ear, sir. I warrant there was never child longed more to ride a cock-horse or wear his new coat, than she longs to ride in her new coach. She would long for everything when she was a maid, and now she will run mad for ’hem. I lay my life, she will have every year four children; and what charge and change of humour you must endure while she is with child, and how she will tie you to your tackling till she be with child, a dog would not endure. Nay, there is no turnspit dog bound to his wheel[51] more servilely than you shall be to her wheel; for, as that dog can never climb the top of his wheel but when the top comes under him, so shall you never climb the top of her contentment but when she is under you. 286
Pe. ’Slight, how thou terrifiest me!
Qu. Nay, hark you, sir; what nurses, what midwives,
what fools, what physicians, what cunning women must be sought for (fearing sometimes she is bewitched, sometimes in a consumption), to tell her tales, to talk bawdy to her, to make her laugh, to give her glisters, to let her blood under the tongue and betwixt the toes; how she will revile and kiss you, spit in your face, and lick it off again; how she will vaunt you are her creature; she made you of nothing; how she could have had thousand mark jointures; she could have been made a lady by a Scotch knight, and never ha’ married him; she could have had ponados[52] in her bed every morning; how she set you up, and how she will pull you down: you’ll never be able to stand of your legs to endure it. 301