_N._ (_within_). Let me out at once. There are no papers here. What did you shut me in here for?
_T._ To follow your occupation—to lounge, lounge in the cupboard. Am I a thief?
_T._ Not till you have made my poem, or told me a cure for the rheumatics. Ay, bawl and kick: I will finish my accounts. Kick away, one for each pile. Twenty-six it was: twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty. Why you overdo it: you kick by the ducat. With three and a half, (_pocketing._) thirty-three ducats and a half. Silence! silence! ’Tis more kicks than half-pence, as they say. If you will be quiet, I will give you back your sonnet. (_Takes it out and reads_)—
Ha! who’s your master now?—I will recite the end part, which I have never read.
_Once in a vesture of pale crimson came That willowed Archdelight, whose eyes are dim With gazing on a book of writhing flame:_ 2501
_And with him Hope, the stringless harp-player, Himself an embelem, harped in mine ear His long-lost Sapphic song and nuptial hymn._
Hem! Very good, sir, as far as it goes. You should finish this and have it ready by the wedding. See! I will thrust it to you under the door. Won’t you take it back? If I have not charmed him to sleep with his own verses! Ha! he bites—he lives. (_N. pulls it to him from within._) (_To himself._) This is very well. But I wonder why my master wished him out of the way; and why he is sent to Milan; and taking all these things with him; and why he is travelling in that doublet. He hath no care for his clothes. Yet I’ll do him a last service, and brush it for him. ’Tis sadly dusty (_having taken it down_). He shall not say that his old valet neglected him in aught. So lie there. (_puts doublet on table._) Pockets full, of course. If I were a gentleman, I’d have no pockets. How can velvet lie? How can one smoothe it down, stuffed out in a lump like this ... an old handkerchief, I’ll warrant ... no ... a glove: a lady’s glove: a very secret affair: one he hath stolen to write verses on. I shall tell the Countess of this. (_Knocking at the door heard._) This will be Mister Ricardo, I suppose. Come in!
Tristram, where’s your master? Not at home?
_N._ (_kicking harder_), Sir Gregory! Sir Gregory! I am here!