Tom Long being newly set up a carrier, as he was travelling he happened
to take up a young lad, who had straggled from his parents to play the
truant, which Tom perceiving, entertained him into his service; but they
had not gone far before their stomachs were up, so they resolved at the
next place to take a bit, where, as soon as they came, they demanded
what was for to eat. The hostess, being one of Seldom Cleanly's
daughters, said there was nothing but eggs, of which, she said, she
would make them a froize; and seeing them to come in, in a full breast
and an empty stomach, she (like a slut as she was) resolved to give them
their bellies full before they went; and so, with some three or four
good eggs, she mixed as many bad ones, some addle and rotten, and others
ready for to hatch; and having set them down at a certain wash block,
which served instead of a table, she set before them as good a froize as
any woman possibly could make of coarse materials, making her sauce
alike suitable, being nothing else but kitchen stuff melted a
little--oil as good as ever was burned. Tom and the young man fell
presently to it, with stomachs as greedy as hogs, swallowing down all by
wholesale, tag-rag and long-tail, without any chewing, although they
conceited something cracking in their teeth like young bones. Yet
hunger, which is the best sauce, made every morsel sweet, although it
had but an ill going down with it, and worse troubled their patience
afterwards, for they had no sooner eaten of it, but like squeezy
stomachs they began to cast backwards and forwards; and being in this
pitiful pickle, they called for their hostess, who, thinking to receive
her reckoning, was paid in her own coin; for, having some of their
froize left, Tom furiously cast it on her face, which stuck as fast as
a plaister to the wall, insomuch that for a while she lost her eyesight;
which being done, Tom departed without paying anything for his dinner.
CHAPTER III.
_How Tom and his Young Man discoursed of their Dinner,
and how they resolved to mend the matter at night,
but met with as bad Entertainment._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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