PAR. He says! hang him, lean, mercenary, provand[201] rogue: I knew his beginning, when he made the stocks lousy, and swarmed so with vermin, we were afraid he would have brought that curse upon the country. He says! but what matters what he says? a rogue by sire and dam! his father was a broad, fat pedlar, a what-do-you-lack, sir? that haunted good houses, and stole more than he bought: his dam was a gipsy, a pilfering, canting Sybil in her youth, and she suffered in her old age for a witch. Poor Stromwell, the rogue was a perpetual burthen to her, she carried him longer at her back than in her belly; he dwelt there, till she lost him one night in the great frost upon our common, and there he was found in the morning candied in ice--a pox of their charity that thawed him! You might smell a rogue then in the bud: he is now run away from his wife. WAN. His wife? PAR. Yes, his wife; why, do you not know he's married according to the rogues' liturgy? a left-handed bridegroom. I saw him take the ring from a tinker's dowager. WAN. Is this possible? PAR. Yes, most possible, and you shall see how I'll be revenged on him: I will immediately go seek the ordinance against reformadoes. WAN. What ordinance? PAR. Why, they do so swarm about the town, and are so destructive to trade and all civil government, that the state has declared no person shall keep above two colonels and four captains (of what trade soever) in his family; for now the war is done, broken breech, woodmonger, ragman, butcher, and linkboy (comrades that made up the ragged regiment in this holy war), think to return and be admitted to serve out their times again. WAN. Your ordinance will not touch the captain, for he is a known soldier. PAR. He a captain! an apocryphal modern one, that went convoy once to Brentford with those troops that conducted the contribution-puddings in the late holy war, when the city ran mad after their russet Levites, apron-rogues with horn hands. Hang him, he's but the sign of a soldier; and I hope to see him hanged for that commission, when the king comes to his place again. WAN. You abuse him now he's gone; but---- PAR. Why, dost thou think I fear him? No, wench, I know him too well for a cowardly slave, that dares as soon eat his fox,[202] as draw it in earnest: the slave's noted to make a conscience of nothing but fighting. WAN. Well, if you be not a good man and a kind husband---- PAR. Thou knowest the proverb, as happy as the parson's wife during her husband's life. [_Exeunt._ SCENE II. _Enter_ MISTRESS PLEASANT, WIDOW WILD, _her aunt, and_ SECRET, _her woman, above in the music-room, as dressing her: a glass, a table, and she in her night-clothes_. PLEA. Secret, give me the glass, and see who knocks. WID. Niece, what, shut the door? as I live, this music was meant to you: I know my nephew's voice. PLEA. Yes, but you think his friend's has more music in't.