Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume II.djvu/198

Rh and contradiction to her laws? This was the view of a fair lady I have heard speak of, which watching her husband one day walking up and down in a great hall, cannot refrain her from turning to her lover and saying, "Just look at our good man pacing there; has not he the true build of a cuckold? Surely I should have gone sore against dame Nature, seeing she had created him and destined him for this, an if I had contradicted her intent and given her the lie!"

I have heard speak of another lady, which did thus complain of her husband, which did treat her ill and was ever jealously spying on her, suspecting she was making him a set of horns: "Nay! he is too good," she would cry to her lover; "he thinks his fire is a match for mine. Why! I do put his out in a turn of the hand, with four or five drops of water. But for mine, which hath a very different depth of furnace, I do need a flood. For we women be of our nature like dropsical folk or a sandy ditch, which the more water they swallow, the more they want."

Another said yet better, how that a woman was like chickens, which do get the pip and die thereof, if they be stinted of water and have not enough to drink. A woman is the same, which doth breed the pip and oft die thereof, if they are not frequently given to drink; only 'tis something else than spring water it must have. Another fair lady was used to say she was like a good garden, which not content with the rain of heaven only, doth ask water of the gardener as well, to be made more fruitful thereby. Another would say she would fain resemble those good economists and excellent managers which do never give out all their property to be guided and a profit