Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/235

BEN JONSON 219 applied in the most various senses or nonsenses ; for the rest, the horse-courser chiefly indulges in stable- slang. Winwife, a gentleman, and Quarlous come on the scene : — " Knock. Master Winwife ! Master Quarlous ! will you take a pipe of tobacco with us ? Do not discredit me now, Zekiel. [Edgworth gives him a purse : Zekiel being used to pay for Dan, and Dan to roar or bully for Zekiel. fVinw. Do not see him ; he is the roaring horse-courser, pray thee let's avoid him : turn down this way. Quar. 'Slud, I'll see him, and roar with him too, an' he roared as loud as Neptune ; pray thee go with me. . . • Knock. Welcome, Master Quarlous, and Master Winwife ; will you take any froth and smoke with us ? Quar. Yes, sir ; but you'll pardon us if we knew not of so much familiarity between us afore. Knock. As what, sir? Quar. To be so lightly invited to smoke and froth." The new-comers and Ursla have a sharp set-to with the tongue; Knockem takes her part, and falls to fist-fighting with Quarlous ; Ursla, who has hurried off for the hot dripping-pan to baste away her anta- gonists, stumbles with it and scalds her leg, her leg, her leg, her leg ! Adam Overdo, the foolish Justice of the Peace, who has come to the Fair disguised as "mad Arthur of Bradley, that makes the orations," in order to take note of all the rogueries there abound- ing, and has been sipping a bottle of ale to cover his watching, and is bamboozled into taking deep interest in the pickpocket, as a clerkly and innocent young man fallen among debauched company, and worthy of rescue — this sapient magistrate moralises : — " Over. These are the fruits of bottle-ale and tobacco ! the foam of the one, and the fumes of the other I Stay, young man,