weapons are your tongues;
Touch lip with lip, and they are bound from wrongs:
Go to, embrace, and say, if you be friends,
That here the angry women's quarrels ends.

MRS GOUR. Then here it ends, if Mistress Barnes say so.

MRS BAR. If you say ay, I list not to say no.

MR GOUR. If they be friends, by promise we agree.

MR BAR. And may this league of friendship ever be!

PHIL. What say'st thou, Frank? doth not this fall out well?

FRAN. Yes, if my Mall were here, then all were well.

_Enter_ SIR RALPH SMITH _with_ MALL. [MALL _stays behind_.]

SIR RALPH. Yonder they be, Mall: stay, stand close, and stir not
Until I call. God save ye, gentlemen!

MR BAR. What, Sir Ralph Smith! you are welcome, man:
We wond'red when we heard you were abroad.

SIR RALPH. Why, sir, how heard ye that I was abroad?

MR BAR. By your man.

SIR RALPH. My man! where is he?

WILL. Here.

SIR RALPH. O, ye are a trusty squire!

NICH. It had been better, and he had said, a sure card.

PHIL. Why, sir?

NICH. Because it is the proverb.

PHIL. Away, ye ass!

NICH. An ass goes a four legs; I go of two, Christ cross.

PHIL. Hold your tongue.

NICH. And make no more ado.

MR GOUR. Go to, no more ado. Gentle Sir Ralph,
Your man is not in fault for missing you,
For he mistook by us, and we by him.

SIR RALPH. And I by you, which now I well perceive.
But tell me, gentlemen, what made ye all
Be from your beds this night, and why thus late
Are your wives walking here about the fields[443]:
'Tis strange to see such women of accompt
Here; but I guess some great occasion [prompt.]

MR GOUR. Faith, this occasion, sir: women will jar;
And jar they did to-day, and so they parted;
We, knowing women's malice let alone
Will, canker-like, eat farther in their hearts,
Did seek a sudden cure, and thus it was:
A match between his daughter and my son;
No sooner motioned but 'twas agreed,
And they no sooner saw but wooed and lik'd:
They have it sought to cross, and cross['d] it thus.

SIR RALPH. Fie, Mistress Barnes and Mistress Goursey both;
The greatest sin wherein your souls may sin,
I think, is this, in crossing of true love:
Let me persuade ye.

MRS BAR. Sir, we are persuaded,
And I and Mistress Goursey are both friends;
And, if my daughter were but found again,
Who now is missing, she had my consent
To be dispos'd of to her own content.

SIR RALPH. I do rejoice that what I thought to do,
Ere I begin, I find already done: