CAREAWAY.
God save me, mistress, do you know me well?
DAME COY.
Come near[196] hither unto me, and I shall thee tell
Why, thou naughty villain, is that thy guise,
To jest with thy mistress in such wise?
Take that to begin with, and God before!
When thy master cometh home, thou shalt have more:
For he told me, when he forth went,
That thou shouldest come back again incontinent
To bring me to supper where he now is,
And thou hast played by the way, and they have done by this.
But no force I shall, thou mayest trust me,
Teach all naughty knaves to beware by thee.
CAREAWAY.
Forsooth, mistress, if ye knew as much as I,
Ye would not be with me half so angry;
For the fault is neither in my master, nor in me, nor you,
But in another knave that was here even now,
And his name was Jenkin Careaway—
DAME COY.
What, I see my man is disposed to play!
I ween he be drunken or mad, I make God a vow!
CAREAWAY.
Nay, I have been made sober and tame, I, now:—
I was never so handled before in all my life:
I would every man in England had so beaten[197] his wife!
I have forgotten with tousing by the hair,
What I devised to say a little ere.
DAME COY.
Have I lost my supper this night through thy negligence?
CAREAWAY.
Nay then were I a knave, mistress, saving your reverence.
DAME COY.
Why, I am sure that by this time it is done—
CAREAWAY.
Yea, that it is more than an hour agone—
DAME COY.
And was not thou sent to fetch me thither?