BUD. Did the letter work so strangely on her, are you sure? I would not willingly venture my lips for a kiss, or my eyes for a look. DITTY. Why, I tell thee she was so nigh a dissolution when I left her, that I thought to have found her in a sand-box, or begged by some vintner to keep bottled wine in, before I could return. BUD. Well, I'll try, though she squeeze me into verjuice, and stamp my bones into small coal, that they may be twice burnt. [_Advances._] O my honeycomb, milksop Nancy, whiter than the powder of chalk, and (like it) able to scour off the dirt of sullied drabs, and paint them with a brightness as glustering as thy own. CURDS. Out, you sooty goblin, besmeared dolt! dost think I'll couple with a negro, to bring forth magpies, half white and half black? Take me for a bee, to knit at the sound of a brass kettle or frying-pan? Bundle of charcoal, furred crock, dost think I'll hang in thy pot-hook arm? Hence, or I'll beat thee worse than the Bridewell crew does hemp! DITTY. Ay, ay, read him the same lesson you conned me! BUD. Sweet Mistress Curds, be not so sour. Good Ditty, stop her mouth. DITTY. Hold, hold, Nancy! He thought all women like pots of ale, and that tinkers might call for 'um as freely as the finest customer; this crab-tree lecture will teach him better manners hereafter. JEN. Ay, sister, do not foul your mouth any more with the checker-faced scullion; let him go. DITTY. Come, then, and shake hands; we'll fine him for's sauciness, and his ransom shall be half a dozen at mine host Welcome's. Come, come, you shall be friends, and I'll perfect the reconciliation with a song. BUD. Half a dozen! We'll score out all the chalk i' th' house, and make the tapster fetch one o' th' city clerks to sum up the reckoning. JEN. Come, sister, let's go drink sorrows dry; and a woman's anger should be like jack-weights--quickly up and quickly down. [_Exeunt._ SCENE XIII. _Enter_ WELCOME. WEL. Ay, ay, 'tis the rich face that keeps us from poverty. If the tailor's countenance were in fashion now, and all that had fiery faces were counted comets, what a decay would there be amongst our houses of good fellowship. How our cans would rot and jugs grow musty for want of use! I would the whole city were jugs and cans, that they might never be in good case but when they're full of good liquor. I fear this will be a bad year for all of our profession; salt meats are grown out of fashion, and Lent will be forgotten this year, and, for aught I know, the next Papist that's drunk may make the people condemn it for superstition because he uses it. Forbid, thou who ever art patron of good fellowship! _Enter_ BUNG.