Con. But what was that you whispered to him in the hall?
Jolly. Why, the butler and I, by the intercession of Marchbeer, had newly reconciled him to his dad's old codpiece corslet in the hall, which, when his zeal was up, he would needs throw down, because it hung upon a cross.
Con. But what think you of my neighbour? I hope her charity takes you.
Jolly. Yes, and her old waiting-woman's devotion: she sighed in the pew behind me. A Dutch skipper belches not so loud or so sour. My lady's miserable sinner with the white eyes, she does so squeeze out her prayers, and so wring out, Have mercy upon us. I warrant her she has a waiting-woman's sting in her conscience. She looks like a dirty-souled bawd.
Con. Who? is this my Lady Freedom's woman that he describes?
Jolly. The same, the independent lady. I have promised to send her a cripple or two by the next carrier. Her subject-husband would needs show me his house one morning. I never visited such an hospital: it stank like Bedlam, and all the servants were carrying poultices, juleps, and glisters, and several remedies for all diseases but his. The man sighed to see his estate crumbling away. I counselled him either to give or take an ounce of ratsbane, to cure his mind.
Con. She is my cousin; but he made such a complaint to me, I thought he had married the company of Surgeons' Hall: for his directions to me for several things for his wife's use were fitter for an apothecary's shop than a lady's closet.
Jolly. I advised him to settle no jointure but her old stills and a box of instruments upon her. She hates a man with all his limbs: a wooden leg, a crutch, and fistula in ano, wins her heart. Her gentleman-usher broke his leg last dogdays merely to have the honour to have her set it. A foul, rank rogue! and so full of salt humours, that he posed a whole college of old women with a gangrene, which spoiled the jest, and his ambling before my lady, by applying a handsaw to his gart'ring-place; and now the rogue wears booted bed-staves, and destroys all the young ashes to make him legs.
Sad. I never saw such a nasty affection: she would ha' done well in the incurable—a handmaid to have waited on the cripples.