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215 WILLIAM CONGHEVE [ACT II
Enter Nurse.
Fore. Nurse, where's your young mistress?
Nurse. Wce'st heart, I know not, they're none of 'cm
come home yet. Poor child! I warrant she's fond o' seeing
the town;—marry, pray heaven, they ha' given her any
dinner.—Good lack-a-day, ha! ha! ha! Oh strange! I'll vow
and swear now,—hal ha! ha! marry, and did you ever see
the like?
Fore. Why, how now, what's the matter?
Nurse. Pray Heaven send your worship good luck! marry
and amen with all my heart; for you have put on one
stocking with the wrong side outward.
Fore. Ha, how? faith and troth I'm glad of it!—And so
I have; that may be good luck in troth, in troth it may,
very good luck; nay, I have had some omens: I got out of
bed backwards too this morning, without premeditation;
pretty good that too; but then I stumbled coming down
stairs, and met a weasel; bad omens those: some bad, some
good, our lives are chequered: mirth and sorrow, want and
plenty, night and day, make up our time.—But in troth I
am pleased at my stocking; very well pleased at my stocking.—Dh,
here's my niece!—Sirrah, go tell Sir Sampson
Legend I'll wait on him if he's at leisure; 'tis now three
o'clock, a very good hour for business. Mercury governs this
hour. [Exit Servant.
Enter ANGELICA.
Ang. Is it not a good hour for pleasure too, uncle? pray
lend me your coach, mine's out of order.
Fore. What, would you be gadding too? sure all females
are mad to-day. It is of evil portent, and bodes mischief
to the master of a family.—I remember an old prophecy
written by Messahalah the Arabian, and this translated by a
reverend Buckinghamshire bard.
"When housewives all the house forsake,
And leave goodman to brew and bake,
Withouten guile then be it said,
That house doth stond upon its head;
And when the head is set in ground,
Nc mar'l if it be fruitful found."
Fruitful, the head fruitful;—that bodes horns, the fruit of