MRS. FRAIL. Why, can’st thou love, Porpuss?
BEN. No matter what I can do; don’t call names. I don’t love you so well as to bear that, whatever I did. I’m glad you show yourself, mistress. Let them marry you as don’t know you. Gad, I know you too well, by sad experience; I believe he that marries you will go to sea in a hen-pecked frigate—I believe that, young woman—and mayhap may come to an anchor at Cuckolds-Point; so there’s a dash for you, take it as you will: mayhap you may holla after me when I won’t come to.
MRS. FRAIL. Ha, ha, ha, no doubt on’t.—My true love is gone to sea. [Sings]
SCENE XIV.
Mrs. Frail, Mrs. Foresight.
MRS. FRAIL. O sister, had you come a minute sooner, you would have seen the resolution of a lover:—honest Tar and I are parted;—and with the same indifference that we met. O’ my life I am half vexed at the insensibility of a brute that I despised.
MRS. FORE. What then, he bore it most heroically?
MRS. FRAIL. Most tyrannically; for you see he has got the start of me, and I, the poor forsaken maid, am left complaining on the shore. But I’ll tell you a hint that he has given me: Sir Sampson is enraged, and talks desperately of committing matrimony himself. If he has a mind to throw himself away, he can’t do it more effectually than upon me, if we could bring it about.
MRS. FORE. Oh, hang him, old fox, he’s too cunning; besides, he hates both you and me. But I have a project in my head for you, and I have gone a good way towards it. I have almost made a bargain with Jeremy, Valentine’s man, to sell his master to us.
MRS. FRAIL. Sell him? How?