Are you the Marlborough of comedy? Can you marshal
battalions on a turkey carpet, and make gentlefolks witty in platoons?
What is this in the first act? A duel, and both wounded! You butcher!"
"They are not to die, ma'am!" cried Triplet, deprecatingly "upon my
honor," said he, solemnly, spreading his bands on his bosom.
"Do you think I'll trust their lives with you? No! Give me a pen; this is
the way we run people through the body." Then she wrote ("business."
Araminta looks out of the garret window. Combatants drop their swords,
put their hands to their hearts, and stagger off O. P. and P. S.) "Now,
children, who helps me to lay the cloth?"
"I!"
"And I!" (The children run to the cupboard.)
_Mrs. Triplet_ (half rising). "Madam, I--can't think of allowing you."
Mrs. Woffington replied: "Sit down, madam, or I must use brute force. If
you are ill, be ill--till I make you well. Twelve plates, quick!
Twenty-four knives, quicker! Forty-eight forks quickest!" She met the
children with the cloth and laid it; then she met them again and laid
knives and forks, all at full gallop, which mightily excited the bairns.
Pompey came in with the pie, Mrs. Woffington took it and set it before
Triplet.
_Mrs. Woffington._ "Your coat, Mr. Triplet, if you please."
_Mr. Triplet._ "My coat, madam!"
_Mrs. Woffington._ "Yes, off with it-- there's a hole in it--and carve.
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