MISS. O father, why will you let him go? Won’t you make him to be my husband?
FORE. Mercy on us, what do these lunacies portend? Alas! he’s mad, child, stark wild.
MISS. What, and must not I have e’er a husband, then? What, must I go to bed to nurse again, and be a child as long as she’s an old woman? Indeed but I won’t. For now my mind is set upon a man, I will have a man some way or other. Oh, methinks I’m sick when I think of a man; and if I can’t have one, I would go to sleep all my life: for when I’m awake it makes me wish and long, and I don’t know for what. And I’d rather be always asleep than sick with thinking.
FORE. Oh, fearful! I think the girl’s influenced too. Hussy, you shall have a rod.
MISS. A fiddle of a rod, I’ll have a husband; and if you won’t get me one, I’ll get one for myself. I’ll marry our Robin the butler; he says he loves me, and he’s a handsome man, and shall be my husband: I warrant he’ll be my husband, and thank me too, for he told me so.
[_To them_] SCANDAL, MRS. FORESIGHT, _and_ NURSE.
FORE. Did he so? I’ll dispatch him for’t presently. Rogue! O nurse, come hither.
FORE. Here, take your young mistress and lock her up presently, till farther orders from me. Not a word, Hussy; do what I bid you, no reply, away. And bid Robin make ready to give an account of his plate and linen, d’ye hear: begone when I bid you.
FORE. ’Tis not convenient to tell you now. Mr. Scandal, heav’n keep us all in our senses—I fear there is a contagious frenzy abroad. How does Valentine?
SCAN. Oh, I hope he will do well again. I have a message from him to your niece Angelica.
FORE. I think she has not returned since she went abroad with Sir Sampson. Nurse, why are you not gone?
MRS. FORE. Here’s Mr. Benjamin, he can tell us if his father be come home.
BEN. Who? Father? Ay, he’s come home with a vengeance.
FORE. Mercy on us, I was afraid of this. And there’s the handsome young woman, she, as they say, brother Val went mad for, she’s mad too, I think.
FORE. Oh, my poor niece, my poor niece, is she gone too? Well, I shall run mad next.
MRS. FORE. Well, but how mad? How d’ye mean?
BEN. Nay, I’ll give you leave to guess. I’ll undertake to make a voyage to Antegoa—no, hold; I mayn’t say so, neither. But I’ll sail as far as Leghorn and back again before you shall guess at the matter, and do nothing else. Mess, you may take in all the points of the compass, and not hit right.