Par. That's more than thy dear dam could do for thee, thou son of a thousand fathers, all poor soldiers: rogues that ought mischiefs, no midwives, for their birth. But I cry thee mercy, my patron has an estate of old iron by his side, with the farm of old ladies he scrapes a dirty living from.
Wan. He earn from an old lady: hang him, he's only wicked in his desires; and for adultery he cannot be condemned, though he should have the vanity to betray himself. God forgive me for belying him so often as I have done; the weak-chined slave hired me once to say I was with child by him.
Capt. This is pretty. Farewell; and may the next pig thou farrow'st have a promising face, without the dad's fool or gallows in't, that all may swear, at first sight, that's a bastard; and it shall go hard, but I'll have it called mine. I have the way; 'tis but praising thee, and swearing thou art honest before I am asked: you taught me the trick.
Par. Next levy I'll preach against thee, and tell them what a piece you are. Your drum and borrowed scarf shall not prevail; nor shall you win with charms, half-ell long (hight ferret riband) the youth of our parish, as you have done.[199]
Capt. No, lose no time: prythee, study and learn to preach, and leave railing against the surplice, now thou hast preached thyself into linen. Adieu, Abigail! adieu, heir-apparent to Sir Oliver Mar-text! to church, go; I'll send a beadle shall sing your epithalamium.
Par. Adieu, my captain of a tame band. I'll tell your old lady how you abused her breath, and swore you earned your money harder than those that dig in the mines for't. [Exit Captain.] A fart fill thy sail, captain of a galley foist.[200] He's gone: come, sweet, let's to church immediately, that I may go and take my revenge: I'll make him wear thin breeches.
Wan. But if you should be such a man as he says you are, what would my friends say when they hear I have cast myself away?
Par. He says! hang him, lean, mercenary, provand[201] rogue: I knew his beginning, when he made the stocks lousy, and swarmed so with vermin, we were afraid he would have brought that curse upon the country. He says! but what matters what he says? a rogue by sire and dam! his father was a broad, fat pedlar, a what-do-you-lack, sir? that haunted good houses, and stole more than he bought: his dam was a gipsy, a pilfering, canting Sybil in her youth, and she suffered in her old age for a witch. Poor Stromwell, the rogue was a perpetual burthen to her, she carried him longer at her back than in her belly; he dwelt there, till she lost him one night in the great frost upon our common, and there he was found in the morning candied in ice—a pox of their charity that thawed him! You might smell a rogue then in the bud: he is now run away from his wife.
Wan. His wife?
Par. Yes, his wife; why, do you not know he's married according to the rogues' liturgy? a left-handed bridegroom. I saw him take the ring from a tinker's dowager.