Mir. Go, leave your cursing,
And follow her; let me alone with him.
Char. Ha! have I found you? Ho! Nerina, stay!
Your father calls you; was not that my daughter
That made away so fast?
Mir. Who, she that's gone?
Believe your eyes no more, they are false to you.
Could you take one for her that's nothing like her?
'Twas Chloris went from us.
Char. Is't possible?
Mir. 'Tis true.
Daph. I thought that it had been my love.
Char. I durst have sworn that she had been my daughter.
What made she here? 'Twill ne'er be otherwise;
Young women will be chatting with young men,
Whate'er their fathers say. It was not so
When I was young—a boy, as you are, shepherds.
Mir. We are not men with him till after fifty.
Char. We never durst keep company with women,
Nor they with us: each one did carefully
Attend his charge. And when the time was come,
That we grew ripe in years, and were staid youths,
Our fathers would provide us wives: we did not
Carve for ourselves, as nowadays they do.
But now our children think themselves as wise,
Nay, wiser than their fathers, and will rule 'em:
They can no sooner peep out of the shell,
But they must love, forsooth. I would fain know,
Whether 'twere fit a maid should be in love—
I speak now of that skittish girl, my daughter—
Before she ask her father's leave and liking?
Daph. Tis true, Charinus, 'twere not fit indeed.
Who should bestow the daughter but the father?