id="id00387">MOLL.
I'd thought to steal a marriage: would his tongue
Had dropt out when be blabbed it!

WIDDOW. But, sir, my husband was too honest a dealing man to be now in any purgatories—

PYE.
O, Do not load your conscience with untruths;
Tis but mere folly now to gild him o'er,
That has past but for Copper. Praises here
Cannot unbind him there: confess but truth.
I know he got his wealth with a hard grip:
Oh hardly, hardly.

WIDDOW.
This is most strange of all: how knows he that?

PYE.
He would eat fools and ignorant heirs clean up;
And had his drink from many a poor man's brow,
E'en as their labour brewed it.
He would scrape riches to him most unjustly;
The very dirt between his nails was Ill-got,
And not his own,—oh, I groan to speak on't,
The thought makes me shudder—shudder!

WIDDOW. It quakes me too, now I think on't.—Sir, I am much grieved, that you, a stranger, should so deeply wrong my dead husband!

PYE.
Oh!

WIDDOW. A man that would keep Church so duly; rise early, before his servants, and e'en for Religious hast, go ungartered, unbuttoned, nay, sir Reverence, untrust, to Morning Prayer.