_Ver._ I hope to see you live many a fair day yet though. _Sir Dav._ Ah, my wife, my poor wife! lead me to my poor wife. [_Exeunt._ [Illustration] SCENE III.--Lady DUNCE'S _Chamber_. Lady DUNCE _and_ BEAUGARD _discovered_. _L. Dunce._ What think you now of a cold wet march over the mountains, your men tired, your baggage not come up, but at night a dirty watery plain to encamp upon, and nothing to shelter you, but an old leaguer cloak as tattered as your colours? Is not this much better, now, than lying wet, and getting the sciatica? _Beau._ The hopes of this made all fatigue easy to me; the thoughts of Clarinda have a thousand times refreshed me in my solitude. Whene'er I marched, I fancied still it was to my Clarinda; when I fought, I imagined it was for my Clarinda; but when I came home, and found Clarinda lost!--How could you think of wasting but a night in the rank, surfeiting arms of this foul-feeding monster, this rotten trunk of a man, that lays claim to you? _L. Dunce._ The persuasion of friends, and the authority of parents. _Beau._ And had you no more grace than to be ruled by a father and mother? _L. Dunce._ When you were gone, that should have given me better counsel, how could I help myself? _Beau._ Methinks, then, you might have found out some cleanlier shift to have thrown away yourself upon than nauseous old age, and unwholesome deformity. _L. Dunce._ What, upon some over-grown, full-fed country fool, with a horse-face, a great ugly head, and a great fine estate; one that should have been drained and squeezed, and jolted up and down the town in hackneys with cheats and hectors, and so sent home at three o'clock every morning, like a lolling booby, stinking, with a belly-full of stummed wine,[52] and nothing in's pockets? _Beau._ You might have made a tractable beast of such a one; he would have been young enough for training. _L. Dunce._ Is youth then so gentle, if age be stubborn? Young men, like springs wrought by a subtle workman, easily ply to what their wishes press them; but the desire once gone that kept them down, they soon start straight again, and no sign's left which way they bent before. _Sir Jol._ [_At the door peeping._] So, so, who says I see anything now? I see nothing, not I; I don't see, I don't see, I don't look, not so much as look, not I. [_He enters._ _Enter_ Sir DAVY DUNCE. _Sir Dav._ I will have my wife, carry me to my wife, let me go to my wife, I'll live and die with my wife, let the devil do his worst; ah, my wife, my wife, my wife! _L. Dunce._ [_To_ BEAUGARD.] Alas! alas! we are ruined! shift for yourself; counterfeit the dead corpse once more, or anything.