do you mean?
_Cel_. To discount for so many days of my years service, as I
have paid in this morning.
_Flo_. With all my heart.
_Cel_. _Imprimis_, for a treat.
_Item_, For my glass coach.
_Item_, For sitting bare, and wagging your fan.
And lastly, and principally, for my fidelity to you this long hour
and half.
_Flo_. For this I bate you three weeks of your service; now hear
your bill of faults; for your comfort 'tis a short one.
_Cel_. I know it.
_Flo_. _Imprimis_, _item_, and sum total, for keeping
company with Melissa's daughters.
_Cel_. How the pox came you to know of that? Gad, I believe
the devil plays booty against himself, and tells you of my sins.
[_Aside_.
_Flo_. The offence being so small, the punishment shall be but
proportionable; I will set you back only half a year.
_Cel_. You're most unconscionable: When then do you think we
shall come together? There's none but the old patriarchs could live
long enough to marry you at this rate. What, do you take me for some
cousin of Methusalem's, that I must stay an hundred years, before I
come to beget sons and daughters?
_Flo_. Here's an impudent lover! he complains of me without ever
offering to excuse himself; _item_, a fortnight more for that.
_Cel_. So, there's another puff in my voyage, has blown me back
to the north of Scotland.
_Flo_. All this is nothing to your excuse for the two sisters.
_Cel_. 'Faith, if ever I did more than kiss them, and that but
once--
_Flo_. What could you have done more to me?
_Cel_. An hundred times more; as thou shalt know, dear rogue, at
time convenient.
_Flo_. You talk, you talk; could you kiss them, though but once,
and ne'er think of me?
_Cel_. Nay, if I had thought of thee, I had kissed them over a
thousand times, with the very force of imagination.
_Flo_. The gallants are mightily beholden to you; you have found
them out a new way to kiss their mistresses, upon other women's lips.
_Cel_. What would you have? You are my Sultana Queen, the
rest are but in the nature of your slaves; I may make some slight
excursions into the enemy's country for forage, or so, but I ever
return to my head quarters.
_Enter one with a letter_.
_Cel_. To me?
_Mess_. If your name be Celadon. [_CEL. reads softly_.
_Flo_. He is swallowing the pill; presently we shall see the
operation.
_Cel. to the page_.] Child, come hither, child; here's money for
thee: So, begone quickly, good child, be
|