PYE. Oh, uff.
WIDDOW. Dine quickly upon high-days, and when I had great guests, would e'en shame me and rise from the Table, to get a good seat at an after-noon Sermon.
PYE. There's the devil, there's the devil! true, he thought it Sactity enough, if he had killed a man, so tad been done in a Pew, or undone his Neighbour, so ta'd been near enough to th' Preacher. Oh,--a Sermon's a fine short cloak of an hour long, and will hide the upper-part of a dissembler.--Church! Aye, he seemed all Church, and his conscience was as hard as the Pulpit!
WIDDOW. I can no more endure this.
PYE. Nor I, widdow, endure to flatter.
WIDDOW. Is this all your business with me?
PYE. No, Lady, tis but the induction too'te. You may believe my strains, I strike all true, And if your conscience would leap up to your tongue, your self would affirm it: and that you shall perceive I know of things to come as well as I do of what is present, a Brother of your husband's shall shortly have a loss.
WIDDOW. A loss; marry, heaven for-fend! Sir Godfrey, my brother?
PYE. Nay, keep in your wonders, will I have told you the fortunes of you all; which are more fearful, if not happily prevented: --for your part and your daughters, if there be not once this day some blood-shed before your door, whereof the human creature dies, two of you--the elder--shall run mad.
MOTHER AND FRANCES. Oh!
MOLL. That's not I yet!
PYE. And with most impudent prostitution show your naked bodies to the view of all beholders.
WIDDOW. Our naked bodies? fie, for shame!
PYE. Attend me: and your younger daughter be strocken dumb.
MOLL. Dumb? out, alas: tis the worst pain of all for a Woman. I'd rather be mad, or run naked, or any thing: dumb?
PYE. Give ear: ere the evening fall upon Hill, Bog, and Meadow, this my speech shall have past probation, and then shall I be believed accordingly.
WIDDOW. If this be true, we are all shamed, all undone.
MOLL. Dumb? I'll speak as much as ever I can possible before evening!
PYE. But if it so come to pass (as for your fair sakes I wish it may) that this presage of your strange fortunes be prevented by that accident of death and blood-shedding which I before told you of: take heed upon your lives that two of you, which have vow'd never to marry, seek you out husbands with all present speed, and you, the third, that have such a desire to out-strip chastity, look you meddle not with a husband.
MOLL. A double torment.
PYE. The breach of this keeps your father in Purgatory, and the punishments that shall follow you in this world would with horror kill the Ear should hear 'em related.
WIDDOW. Marry? why I vowed never to marry.
FRANCES. And so did I.
MOLL. And I vowed never to be such an Ass, but to marry: what a cross Fortune's this!
PYE. Ladies, tho I be a Fortune-teller, I cannot better Fortunes; you have 'em from me as they are revealed to me: I would they were to your tempers, and fellows with your bloods, that's all the bitterness I would you.
WIDDOW. Oh, 'tis a just vengeance for my husband's hard purchases.
PYE. I wish you to be-think your selves, and leave 'em.
WIDDOW. I'll to Sir Godfrey, my Brother, and acquaint him with these fearful presages.
FRANCES. For, Mother, they portend losses to him.
WIDDOW. Oh, aye, they do, they do. If any happy issue crown thy words, I will reward thy cunning.
PYE. 'Tis enough Lady; I wish no higher.
[Exit Widdow and Frances.]
MOLL. Dumb! and not marry, worse! Neither to speak, nor kiss, a double curse.
[Exit.]
PYE. So all this comes well about yet. I play the Fortune-teller as well as if I had had a Witch to my Grannam: for by good happiness, being in my Hostesses' Garden, which neighbours the Orchard o the Widdow, I laid the hole of mine ear to a hole in the wall, and heard 'em make these vows, and speak those words upon which I wrought these advantages; and to encourage my forgery the more, I may now perceive in 'em a natural simplicity which will easily swallow an abuse, if any covering be over it: and to confirm my former presage to the Widdow, I have advised old Peter Skirmish, the Soldier, to hurt Corporal Oath upon the Leg; and in that hurry I'll rush amongst 'em, and in stead of giving the Corporal some Cordial to comfort him, I'll power into his mouth a potion of a sleepy Nature, to make him seem as dead; for the which the old soldier being apprehended, and ready to be born to execution, I'll step in, and take upon me the cure of the dead man, upon pain of dying the condemned's death: the Corporal will wake at his minute, when the sleepy force has wrought it self, and so shall I get my self into a most admired opinion, and under the pretext of that cunning, beguile as I see occasion: and if that foolish Nicholas Saint Tantlings keep true time with the chain, my plot will be sound, the Captain delivered, and my wits applauded among scholars and soldiers for ever.