“Nay,” said the Duke, “it is but a trifling matter after all.—You know Ned Christian?”
“Ay, surely, my lord,” replied the Colonel, “we have been long known to each other.”
“He is about to go down to Derbyshire to seek a certain niece of his, whom he will scarcely find there. Now, I trust to your tried friendship to interrupt his return to London. Go with him, or meet him, cajole him, or assail him, or do what thou wilt with him—only keep him from London for a fortnight at least, and then I care little how soon he comes.”
“For by that time, I suppose,” replied the Colonel, “any one may find the wench that thinks her worth the looking for.”
“Thou mayst think her worth the looking for thyself, Colonel,” rejoined the Duke; “I promise you she hath many a thousand stitched to her petticoat; such a wife would save thee from skeldering on the public.”
“My lord, I sell my blood and my sword, but not my honour,” answered the man sullenly; “if I marry, my bed may be a poor, but it shall be an honest one.”
“Then thy wife will be the only honest matter in thy possession, Colonel—at least since I have known you,” replied the Duke.
“Why, truly, your Grace may speak your pleasure on that point. It is chiefly your business which I have done of late; and if it were less strictly honest than I could have wished, the employer was to blame as well as the agent. But for marrying a cast-off mistress, the man (saving your Grace, to whom I am bound) lives not who dares propose it to me.”
The Duke laughed loudly. “Why, this is mine Ancient Pistol’s vein,” he replied.
——“Shall I Sir Pandarus of Troy become,
And by my side wear steel?—then Lucifer take all!”