HEART. Ay! Why, to come to love through all these incumbrances is like coming to an estate overcharged with debts, which, by the time you have paid, yields no further profit than what the bare tillage and manuring of the land will produce at the expense of your own sweat. BELL. Prithee, how dost thou love? SHARP. He! He hates the sex. HEART. So I hate physic too—yet I may love to take it for my health. BELL. Well come off, George, if at any time you should be taken straying. SHARP. He has need of such an excuse, considering the present state of his body. HEART. How d’ye mean? SHARP. Why, if whoring be purging, as you call it, then, I may say, marriage is entering into a course of physic. BELL. How, George! Does the wind blow there? HEART. It will as soon blow north and by south—marry, quotha! I hope in heaven I have a greater portion of grace, and I think I have baited too many of those traps to be caught in one myself. BELL. Who the devil would have thee? unless ’twere an oysterwoman to propagate young fry for Billingsgate—thy talent will never recommend thee to anything of better quality. HEART. My talent is chiefly that of speaking truth, which I don’t expect should ever recommend me to people of quality. I thank heaven I have very honestly purchased the hatred of all the great families in town. SHARP. And you in return of spleen hate them. But could you hope to be received into the alliance of a noble family— HEART. No; I hope I shall never merit that affliction, to be punished with a wife of birth, be a stag of the first head and bear my horns aloft, like one of the supporters of my wife’s coat. S’death I would not be a Cuckold to e’er an illustrious whore in England. BELL. What, not to make your family, man and provide for your children? SHARP. For her children, you mean. HEART. Ay, there you’ve nicked it. There’s the devil upon devil. Oh, the pride and joy of heart ’twould be to me to have my son and heir resemble such a duke; to have a fleering coxcomb scoff and cry, ‘Mr. your son’s mighty like his Grace, has just his smile and air of’s face.’ Then replies another, ‘Methinks he has more of the Marquess of such a place about his nose and eyes, though he has my Lord what-d’ye-call’s mouth to a tittle.’ Then I, to put it off as unconcerned, come chuck the infant under the chin, force a smile, and cry, ‘Ay, the boy takes after his mother’s relations,’ when the devil and she knows ’tis a little compound of the whole body of nobility. BELL+SHARP. Ha, ha, ha! BELL. Well, but, George, I have one question to ask you— HEART. Pshaw, I have prattled away my time. I hope you are in no haste for an answer, for I shan’t stay now. [_Looking on his watch_.] BELL. Nay, prithee, George— HEART. No; besides my business, I see a fool coming this way. Adieu. SCENE V. SHARPER, BELLMOUR.