trees. The most of these deer will come to handif they take cover, sir, down with the woods, for the hunting is meant to be so royal as trees, dogs, deer, all mean to be a part of the quarry.

In the passage.

DUGGS, wet nurse; KECKS, dry nurse; and HOLDBACK, midwife.

Duggs. Are they coming? where? which are the gossips?

Kecks. Peace, here they come all.

Duggs. I'll up and get me a standing behind the

arras.

Hold. You'll be thrust there, i'faith, nurse.

Hold. No; he with the blue riband, peace!

Kecks. O, sweet gentleman! he a gossip! he were fitter to be a father, 'ifaith.

Hold. So they were both, an 'twere fortune's good pleasure to send it.

At the banquet.

HOLDBACK enters with the child, DUGGs and KECKS.

countess.

Hold. Now heaven multiply your highness and my honourable lord too, and my good lady the I have one word for you all, Welcome! which is enough to the wise, and as good as a hundred, you know. This is my day. My lords and my ladies, how like you my boy? is't not a goodly boy? I said his name would be Charles when I looked upon Charles' wain t'other night. He was born under that star-I have given measure, i'faith,

5 A short question was probably overlooked by the scribe.

he'll prove a pricker by one privy mark that I found about him. Would you had such another, my lord gossips, every one of you, and as like the father. O what a glad woman and a proud should I be to be seen at home with you upon the same occasion!

Duggs. Come, come, never push for it, woman; I know my place. It is before, and I would not have you mistake it.

Kecks. Then belike my place is behind.

Duggs. Be it where it will, I'll appear.

Hold. How now, what's the matter with you two? Duggs. Why, Mistress Kecks, the dry nurse, strives to have place of me.

Kecks. Yes, Mistress Duggs, I do indeed.

Hold. What! afore the Prince! are you so rude and uncivil?

Kecks. Why not afore the Prince? (worshipped might he be;) I desire no better judge.

Hold. No! and my Lord Chancery here? Do you know what you say? Go to, nurse, ha' done, and let the music have their play. You have made a joyful house here, i'faith; the glad lady within in the straw, I hope, has thanked you for her little Carl, the little christian-such a comfortable day as this will even make the father ready to make adventure for another, in my conscience. Sing sweetly, I pray you, an you have a good breast, out with it for my lord's credit.

SONG.

If now as merry you could be

As you are welcome here,

Who wait would have no time to see
The meanness of the cheer.

But you that deign the place and lord
So much of bounty and grace
Read not the banquet on his board,
But that within his face.

Where, if by engaging of his heart
He yet could set forth more,
The world would scarce afford a part
Of such imagined store.

All had been had that could be wished

Upon so rich a pawn,

Were it ambrosia to be dished,

Or nectar to be drawn.

Duggs. How, dame! a dry nurse better than a wet nurse?

Kecks. Ay. Is not summer better than winter? Duggs. O, you dream of a dry summer.

Kecks. And you are so wet, you are the worse again. Do you remember my Lady Kickingup's child, that you gave such a bleach to 'twas never clear since?

Duggs. That was my Lady Kickingup's own doing (you dry chip you), and not mine.

Kecks. 'Twas yours, Mrs. Wetter-and you shrunk in the wetting for't, if you be remembered; for she turned you away, I am sure.-Wet moons, you know, were ever good weed-springers.

Duggs. My moon's no wetter than thine, goody Caudle-maker. You for making of costly caudles, as good a nurse as I!

Hold. Why, can I carry no sway nor stroke among you! Will ye open yourselves thus, and let every one enter into your secrets?-Shall they take it up between you, in God's name? Proffer it 'em. I am nobody, I, I know nothing!-I am a midwife of this month! I never held a lady's back till now, you think.

Duggs. We never thought so, Mistress Holdback.

Hold. Go to, you do think so, upon that point,

and say as much in your behaviour. Who, I pray you, provided your places for you? was't not I? When upon the first view of my lady's breasts, and an inspection of what passed from her, with the white wine, and the opal cloud, and my suffumigation.— I told her ladyship at first she was sped, and then upon her pain after drinking the mead and hydromel, I assured her it was so without all peradventureI know nothing! And this, when my lord was deportunate with me to know my opinion whether it was a boy or a girl that her ladyship went withal, I had not my signs and my prognostics about meas the goodness of her ladyship's complexion, the coppidness of her belly, on the right side, the lying of it so high in the cabinet, to pronounce it a boy! Nor I could not say and assure upon the difference of the paps, when the right breast grew harder, the nipple red, rising like a strawberry, the milk white and thick, and standing in pearls upon my nail (the glass and the slide-stone); a boy for my money! nor when the milk dissolved not in water, nor scattered, but sunk-a boy still! No, upon the very day of my lady's labour, when the wives came in, I offered no wagers, not the odds, ay, three to one? Having observed the moon the night before, and her ladyship set her right foot foremost, the right pulse beat quicker and stronger, and her right eye grown and sparkling! I assure your lordship I offered to hold master doctor a Discretion it was a boy; and if his doctorship had laid with me and ventured, his worship had lost his discretion.

Kecks. Why, mistress, here's nobody calls your skill in question; we know that you can tell when a woman goes with a tympany, the mole, or the mooncalf.

Hold. Ay, and whether it be the flesh mole, or the wind mole, or the water mole, I thank God, and

our mistress Nature: she is God's chambermaid, and the midwife is hers. We can examine virginity and frigidity, the sufficiency and capability of the persons; by our places we urge all the conclusions. Many a good thing passes through the midwife's hand, many a merry tale by her mouth, many a glad cup through her lips: she is a leader of wives, the lady of light hearts, and the queen of the gossips.

Kecks. But what is this to us, Mistress Holdback? the which is the better nurse, the wet or the dry?

Hold. Nay, that make an end of between yourselves. I am sure I am dry with talking to you. Give me a cup of hippocras.

Duggs. Why, see there now whether dryness be not a defect out of her own mouth, that she is fain to call for moisture to wet her! Does not the infant do so when it would suck? What stills the child when it's dry but the teat?

Kecks. But when it is wet, in the blankets, with your superfluities, what quiets it then? It is not the two bottles at the breasts, that when you have emptied you do nothing but drink to fill again, will do it. It is the opening of him, and bathing of him, and the washing and the cleansing, and especially the drying that nourishes the child-clearing his eyes and nostrils, wiping his ears, fashioning his head with stroking it between the hands, clapping a piece of scarlet on his mole, forming his mouth for kissing again he come at age, careful laying his legs and arms straight, and swathing them so justly as his mother's maids may leap at him when he bounces out on his blankets. These are the offices of a nurse!—a true nurse. What beauty would ever behold him hereafter if I now by negligence of binding should either make him cramp-shouldered, crookedlegged, splay-footed, or by careless placing the candle in a light should send him forth into the world