“Why, faith, cousin,” says I, “why not? ’Tis my humour to take things that way. There was my uncle, now, would fume and fret himself into a fever if all went not as he wished, but it never did him any good that I could see. Take things as they come, say I.”
“’Tis a poor fashion,” says she, “for it shows that you have no special care for aught.”
“Now methinks ’tis you that wax philosophic,” I says. “And, faith, I don’t follow you. As for caring for aught, why, I have cared for a deal o’ things, but as I never got most of them I came to the conclusion that it was better to want naught.”
“Oh,” says she, “and what, pray, did you care for and want that you didn’t get?”
“Why,” says I, “I wanted to be a country gentleman, with no more anxiety than the rearing of cattle and the making of an occasional ballad or sonnet.”
“Oh, a poet!” says she.
“Why, say a rhymester,” says I. “Heigh-ho! I was all for a quiet life—and here I am in a wet ditch, with a lame leg—plague take it!—and as good a chance of being hanged or shot as any man in England. Nevertheless,” says I, “there’s the present enjoyment of conversing with you, cousin, which is——”
But there, like a woman, she went off at a tangent.
“Master Richard,” says she, “what made you turn rebel?”
“Cousin,” says I, drawing my leg out of the water where I had kept it till it was numbed through. “Why do you ask me such a question?”