One sort there is, widows which do absolutely refuse to marry again, hating wedlock like the plague. So one, a lady of a great house and a witty woman withal, when that I asked her if she were not minded to make her vow once again to the god Hymen, did reply: “Tell me this, by’r lady; suppose a galley-slave or captive to have tugged years long at the oar, tied to the chain, and at last to have got back his freedom, would he not be a fool and a very imbecile, an if he did not hie him away with a good heart, determined never more to be subject to the orders of a savage corsair? So I, after being in slavery to an husband, an if I should take a fresh master, what should I deserve to get, prithee, since without resorting to that extreme, and with no risk at all, I can have the best of good times?” Another great lady, and a kinswoman of mine own, on my asking her if she had no wish to wed again, replied: “Never a bit, coz, but only to bed again,” playing on the words _wed_ and _bed_, and signifying she would be glad enough to give herself some treat, but without intervention of any second husband,—according to the old proverb which saith, “A safer fling unwed than wed.” Another saying hath it, that women be always good hostesses, in love as elsewhere; and a right saying ’tis, for they be mistresses of the situation, and queens wherever they be,—that is the pretty ones be so. I have heard tell of another, which was asked of a 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?” “’Tis for all the world like a clock that is left unwound.”