[Exeunt HONOREA and MARIAN.
MOR. And then my Lord of Kent shall be my son.
Should I go wed my daughter to a boy?
No, no; young girls must have their will restrain'd;
For if the rule be theirs, all runs to nought.
[Exit.
Enter CLACK the Miller, with JOAN.
CLACK. Be not Jug, as a man would say, finer than fivepence, or more proud than a peacock; that is, to seem to scorn to call in at Clack's mill as you pass over the bridge. There be as good wenches as you be glad to pay me toll.
JOAN. Like enough, Clack; I had as live[446] they as I, and a great deal rather too. You, that take toll of so many maids, shall never toll me after you. O God! what a dangerous thing it is but to peep once into love! I was never so haunted with my harvest-work as I am with love's passions.
CLACK. Ay, but Joan, bear old proverbs in your memory; soft and fair; now, sir, if you make too much haste to fall foul, ay, and that upon a foul one too, there fades the flower of all Croydon. Tell me but this: is not Clack the miller as good a name as Grim the collier?
JOAN. Alas! I know no difference in names
To make a maid or choose or to refuse.
CLACK. You were best to say, no, nor in men neither. Well, I'll be sworn
I have; but I have no reason to tell you so much, that care so little
for me [aside]: yet hark.
[CLACK speaketh in her ear.
Enter GRIM and PARSON SHORTHOSE.
GRIM. O Master Parson, there he stands like a scarecrow, to drive me away from her that sticks as close to my heart as my shirt to my back, or my hose to my heel. O Master Parson Shorthose, Grim is but a man as another man is: colliers have but lives, as other men have. All is gone if she go from me: Grim is nobody without her. My heart is in my mouth; my mouth is in my hand; my hand threatens vengeance against the miller, as it were a beadle with a whip in his hand, triumphing o'er a beggar's back!