_N._ Darst thou speak to me thus? 2460 _T._ Did you not call me a thief, and base-born clown? _N._ Art thou not both? _T._ Whate’er I be, Mr. Poet, I have now no master, nor any obligation to any gentleman to make believe for his convenience that thou art aught. Thou! Why thy brainpan hath nought in it but shoddy, I warrant. Thou combed ass! thou left-handed goose!—to curse me! 2470 _N._ By heaven, I cannot away with thee. _T._ No, that you can’t. (_Aside._) I have it. I’ll shut him in the screeky cupboard.—Well, sir: I know what you come after. ’Tis the marriage papers, is it not? I was bid see to them. Look in that cupboard. _N._ Ah! are they there? (_Goes to cupboard and looks in. T. pushes him behind, and shuts door on him, locking it._) _T._ There curse me, and seek your papers.—(_Aside._) I think I have him now. If this does not satisfy my master, I’ll never try to please him again. 2480 _N._ (_within_). Let me out at once. There are no papers here. What did you shut me in here for? _T._ To follow your occupation—to lounge, lounge in the cupboard. Am I a thief? _N._ Let me out, I beg of you, Tristram. _T._ Not till you have made my poem, or told me a cure for the rheumatics. Ay, bawl and kick: I will finish my accounts. Kick away, one for each pile. Twenty-six it was: twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty. Why you overdo it: you kick by the ducat. With three and a half, (_pocketing._) thirty-three ducats and a half. Silence! silence! ’Tis more kicks than half-pence, as they say. If you will be quiet, I will give you back your sonnet. (_Takes it out and reads_)— _Master of mine, remember for pitie._ Ha! who’s your master now?—I will recite the end part, which I have never read. _Once in a vesture of pale crimson came That willowed Archdelight, whose eyes are dim With gazing on a book of writhing flame:_ 2501 My stars! and no wonder neither. _And with him Hope, the stringless harp-player, Himself an embelem, harped in mine ear His long-lost Sapphic song and nuptial hymn._