MISTRESS PAGE.
Faith, but you do, in my mind.
MISTRESS FORD.
Well, I do, then. Yet I say I could show you to the contrary. O, Mistress Page, give me some counsel.
MISTRESS PAGE.
What’s the matter, woman?
MISTRESS FORD.
O woman, if it were not for one trifling respect, I could come to such honour!
MISTRESS PAGE.
Hang the trifle, woman; take the honour. What is it? Dispense with trifles. What is it?
MISTRESS FORD.
If I would but go to hell for an eternal moment or so, I could be knighted.
MISTRESS PAGE.
What? Thou liest! Sir Alice Ford! These knights will hack, and so thou shouldst not alter the article of thy gentry.
MISTRESS FORD.
We burn daylight. Here, read, read. Perceive how I might be knighted. I shall think the worse of fat men as long as I have an eye to make difference of men’s liking. And yet he would not swear; praised women’s modesty; and gave such orderly and well-behaved reproof to all uncomeliness that I would have sworn his disposition would have gone to the truth of his words. But they do no more adhere and keep place together than the Hundredth Psalm to the tune of “Greensleeves.” What tempest, I trow, threw this whale, with so many tuns of oil in his belly, ashore at Windsor? How shall I be revenged on him? I think the best way were to entertain him with hope, till the wicked fire of lust have melted him in his own grease. Did you ever hear the like?
MISTRESS PAGE.
Letter for letter, but that the name of Page and Ford differs! To thy great comfort in this mystery of ill opinions, here’s the twin brother of thy letter. But let thine inherit first, for I protest mine never shall. I warrant he hath a thousand of these letters, writ with blank space for different names—sure, more, and these are of the second edition. He will print them, out of doubt; for he cares not what he puts into the press, when he would put us two. I had rather be a giantess and lie under Mount Pelion. Well, I will find you twenty lascivious turtles ere one chaste man.
MISTRESS FORD.
Why, this is the very same—the very hand, the very words. What doth he think of us?