24
the smith to get it mended. Thus they neither were concerned for his pleasure or his profit, and as for any respect to him, it was no more than an old horse had for his father; it was hateful to them to plout their hands in hawkey’s calf’s cog to hack them; the whole of their toil consisted in trimming of their rigging, though their hull was in a leaky condition; thus they would neither work nor stand idle, for their mental capacities were busily employed teaching the arts of laziness and slandering to one another, and how to torture their master, because he was a Bachelor. Thus did they continue to chatter like hungry cranes, and their tongues never lay, so poor Magopico was brought to a most deplorable dish of desolation; hanging his head, like a brewer’s horse at an ale-house door. So at last he resolved to take unto himself a wife, to scold the servants, and darn his stockings, balance the accounts of the housemaid, and to dress his shirt and wig, and to enjoy all the fifteen pleasures of Matrimony.
FINIS.
