Second Aunt: For to care him and be company
for him on his journey, it being the first time he
ever quitted home.
Queen: This is a great honour. Will you take
a chair?
First Aunt: Leave that for the Prince of the
Marshes. It is away from the draught of the
window.
Second Aunt: We ourselves are in charge of
his health. I have here his eel-skin boots for the
days that will be wet under foot.
First Aunt: And I have here my little bag of
cures, with a cure in it that would rise the body
out of the grave as whole and as sound as the time
you were born.
(Lays it down.)
King: (To Prince.) It is many a day your
father and myself were together in our early time.
What way is he? He was farther out in age than
myself.
Prince: He is ...
First Aunt: (Interrupting.) He is only middling
these last years. The doctors have taken him in
hand.
King: He was more for fowling, and I was
more for horses—before I increased so much in
girth. Is it for horses you are, Prince?