Page:Miscellaneous Plays 1.pdf/273

is, at the best, but a silly colt that strews about his own fodder.

LANDLADY.

Lord help ye, David! would any one think to hear you talk, now, that you had been once the master of this inn, and all by neglecting of your own concerns are come to be the servant at last.

DAVID (with great contempt).

Does the silly woman think, because I did not mind every gill of gin, and pint of twopenny sold in the house, that I could not have managed my own concerns in a higher line? If my parents had done by me as they ought to have done, Master Simons, and had let me follow out my learning, as I was inclined to do, there is no knowing what I might have been. Ods life! I might have been a clerk to the king, or mayhap an archbishop by this time.

(A knocking at the door, Landlady opens it, and enter two Farmers.)

FIRST FARMER.

Is Dolly within?

LANDLADY.

No, she is gone a little way a-field this morning about some errands of her own.