ACRES No, David—in that case!—odds crowns and laurels! your honour follows you to the grave.
DAVID
Now, that's just the place where I could make a shift to do without it.
ACRES
Zounds! David, you are a coward!—It doesn't become my valour to listen
to you.—What, shall I disgrace my ancestors?—Think of that,
David—think what it would be to disgrace my ancestors!
DAVID Under favour, the surest way of not disgracing them, is to keep as long as you can out of their company. Look'ee now, master, to go to them in such haste—with an ounce of lead in your brains—I should think might as well be let alone. Our ancestors are very good kind of folks; but they are the last people I should choose to have a visiting acquaintance with.
ACRES But, David, now, you don't think there is such very, very, very great danger, hey?—Odds life! people often fight without any mischief done!
DAVID By the mass, I think 'tis ten to one against you!—Oons! here to meet some lion-headed fellow, I warrant, with his damned double-barrelled swords, and cut-and-thrust pistols!—Lord bless us! it makes me tremble to think o't—Those be such desperate bloody-minded weapons! Well, I never could abide 'em!—from a child I never could fancy 'em!—I suppose there an't been so merciless a beast in the world as your loaded pistol!
ACRES
Zounds! I won't be afraid!—Odds fire and fury! you shan't make me
afraid.—Here is the challenge, and I have sent for my dear friend Jack
Absolute to carry it for me.
DAVID Ay, i' the name of mischief, let him be the messenger.—For my part I wouldn't lend a hand to it for the best horse in your stable. By the mass! it don't look like another letter! It is, as I may say, a designing and malicious-looking letter; and I warrant smells of gunpowder like a soldier's pouch!—Oons! I wouldn't swear it mayn't go off!
ACRES
Out, you poltroon! you ha'n't the valour of a grasshopper.
DAVID Well, I say no more—'twill be sad news, to be sure, at Clod-Hall! but I ha' done.—How Phillis will howl when she hears of it!—Ay, poor bitch, she little thinks what shooting her master's going after! And I warrant old Crop, who has carried your honour, field and road, these ten years, will curse the hour he was born. [Whimpering.]