Tom. Well, Phillis! What, with a face as if you had never seen me before!—What a work have I to do now? She has seen some new visitant at their house whose airs she has caught, and is resolved to practise them upon me. Numberless are the changes she'll dance through before she'll answer this plain question: videlicet, have you delivered my master's letter to your lady? Nay, I know her too well to ask an account of it in an ordinary way; I'll be in my airs as well as she. [Aside.]—Well, madam, as unhappy as you are at present pleased to make me, I would not, in the general, be any other than what I am. I would not be a bit wiser, a bit richer, a bit taller, a bit shorter than I am at this instant. [Looking steadfastly at her.
Phil. Did ever anybody doubt, Master Thomas, but that you were extremely satisfied with your sweet self?
Tom. I am, indeed. The thing I have least reason to be satisfied with is my fortune, and I am glad of my poverty. Perhaps if I were rich I should overlook the finest woman in the world, that wants nothing but riches to be thought so.
Phil. How prettily was that said! But I'll have a great deal more before I'll say one word. [Aside.
Tom. I should, perhaps, have been stupidly above her had I not been her equal; and by not being her equal, never had opportunity of being her slave. I am my master's servant for hire—I am my mistress's from choice, would she but approve my passion.
Phil. I think it's the first time I ever heard you speak of it with any sense of the anguish, if you really do suffer any.
Tom. Ah, Phillis! can you doubt, after what you have seen?
Phil. I know not what I have seen, nor what I have heard; but since I am at leisure, you may tell me when you fell in love with me; how you fell in love with me; and what you have suffered or are ready to suffer for me.
Tom. Oh, the unmerciful jade! when I am in haste about my master's letter. But I must go through it. [Aside.]—Ah![131] too well I remember when, and how, and on what occasion I was first surprised. It was on the 1st of April, 1715, I came into Mr. Sealand's service; I was then a hobbledehoy, and you a pretty little tight girl, a favourite handmaid of the housekeeper. At that time we neither of us knew what was in us. I remember I was ordered to get out of the window, one pair of stairs, to rub the sashes clean; the person employed on the inner side was your charming self, whom I had never seen before.
Phil. I think I remember the silly accident. What made ye, you oaf, ready to fall down into the street?