ir.

2d Lady. They will stop at the screen.

Knight. And there, as I hear, open the coffin. Push forward,
ladies, to that pillar: thence you will see all.

1st Peas. Oh dear! oh dear! If any man had told me that I should
ride forty miles on this errand, to see him that went out flesh come
home grass, like the flower of the field!

2d Peas. We have changed him, but not mended him, say I, friend.

1st Peas. Never we. He knew where a yeoman's heart lay! One that
would clap a man on the back when his cow died, and behave like a
gentleman to him--that never met you after a hailstorm without
lightening himself of a few pocket-burners.

2d Peas. Ay, that's your poor-man's plaster: that's your right
grease for this world's creaking wheels.

1st Peas. Nay, that's your rich man's plaster too, and covers the
multitude of sins. That's your big pike's swimming-bladder, that
keeps him atop and feeding: that's his calling and election, his
oil of anointing, his salvum fac regem, his yeoman of the wardrobe,
who keeps the velvet-piled side of this world uppermost, lest his
delicate eyes should see the warp that holds it.

2d Peas. Who's the warp, then?

1st Peas. We, man, the friezes and fustians, that rub on till we
get frayed through with overwork, and then all's abroad, and the
nakedness of Babylon is discovered, and catch who catch can.

Old Woman. Pity they only brought his bones home! He would have
made a lovely corpse, surely. He was a proper man!

1st Lady. Oh the mincing step he had with him! and the delicate
hand on a horse, fingering the reins as St. Cicely does the organ-
keys!

2d Lady. And for hunting, another Siegfried.

Knight. If he was Siegfried the gay, she was Chriemhild the grim;
and as likely to prove a firebrand as the girl in the ballad.

1st Lady. Gay, indeed! His smiles were like plumcake, the sweeter
the deeper iced. I never saw him speak civil word to woman, but to
her.

2d Lady. O ye Saints! There was honey spilt on the ground! If I
had such a knight, I'd never freeze alone on the chamber-floor, like
some that never knew when they were well off. I'd never elbow him
off to crusades with my pruderies.

'Pluck your apples while they're ripe,
And pull your flowers in May, O!'

Eh! Mother?

Old Woman. 'Till when she grew wizened, and he grew cold,
The balance lay even 'twixt young and old.'

Monk. Thus Satan bears witness perforce against the vanities of