Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume II.djvu/345

Rh gentleman which was fain to try his ground as a suitor for her hand, an if she would not like an husband. "Nay! sir," she answered, "never talk to me of an husband, I'll have no more of them; but for a lover, I'm not so sure."—"Then, Madame, prithee, let me be that lover, since husband I may not be." Her reply was, "Court me well, and persevere; mayhap you will succeed."

A fair and honourable widow lady, of some thirty summers, one day wishing to break a jest with an honourable gentleman, or to tell truth, to provoke him to love-making, and having as she was about to mount her horse caught the front of her mantle on something and torn it somewhat in detaching it, taking it up said to him: "Look you, what you have done, so and so" (accosting him by his name); "you have ripped my front."

"I should be right sorry to hurt it, Madam; 'tis too sweet and pretty for that."

"Why! what know you of it?" she replied; "you have never seen it."

"What! can you deny," retorted the other, "that I have seen it an hundred times over, when you were a little lassie?"

"Ah! but," said she, "I was then but a stripling, and knew not yet what was what."

"Still, I suppose 'tis yet in the same place as of old, and hath not changed position. I ween I could even now find it in the same spot."

"Oh, yes! 'tis there still, albeit mine husband hath rolled it and turned it about, more than ever did Diogenes with his tub."

"Yes! and nowadays how doth it do without movement?"