Page:Miscellaneous Plays 1.pdf/163

Rh

like a Tick nurse? I trow not! he would have scamper'd off, and left you to follow when you could, or to die, if you had a mind to it.

If I were old and sickly, indeed, I had as lief have Sir John for my master.

I believe so: he is a better man than that skipjack nephew of his, twenty times over, and a better looking man too. I wonder much how he has come to this time o' th' day (for he must be near forty I guess) without taking a wife.

He thinks himself happier, I suppose, without one. And I am sure no lady of any spirit or fashion would think herself happy with him.

How so? what kind of man is he at home on his own estate?

Why half ploughman; for he often enough holds his own plough of a morning, and can cast ye up as straight a furrow as any clod-footed lout in the country; half priest, for he reads family prayers to his servants every Sunday evening as devoutly as the vicar of the parish; half lawyer, for there is never a poor silly idiot that allows himself to be cheated