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Ford. What? While you were there?

Fal. While I was there.

Ford. And did he search for you, and could not find you?

Fal. You shall hear. As good luck would have it, comes in one Mistress Page; gives intelligence of Ford’s approach; and in her invention, and Ford’s wive’s distraction, they convey’d me into a buck- basket.

Ford. A buck-basket?

Fal. [By the Lord], a buck-basket! Ramm’d me in with foul shirts and smocks, socks, foul stockings, greasy napkins, that, Master [Brook], there was the rankest compound of villainous smell that ever offended nostril.

Ford. And how long lay you there?

Fal. Nay, you shall hear, Master [Brook], what I have suffer’d to bring this woman to evil for your good. Being thus cramm’d in the basket, a couple of Ford’s knaves, his hinds, were call’d forth by their mistress to carry me in the name of foul clothes to Datchet-lane. They took me on their shoulders; met the jealous knave their master in the door, who ask’d them once or twice what they had in their basket. I quak’d for fear, lest the lunatic knave would have search’d it; but fate (ordaining he should be a cuckold) held his hand. Well, on went he for a search, and away went I for foul clothes. But mark the sequel, Master [Brook]. I suffer’d the pangs of three several deaths: first, an intolerable fright, to be detected with a jealious rotten bell-wether; next, to be compass’d like a good bilbo in the circumference of a peck, hilt to point, heel to head; and then to be stopp’d in like a strong distillation with stinking clothes that fretted in their own grease. Think of that—a man of my kidney. Think of that—that am as subject to heat as butter; a man of continual dissolution and thaw. It was a miracle to scape suffocation. And in the height of this bath (when I was more than half stew’d in grease, like a Dutch dish) to be thrown into the Thames, and cool’d, glowing-hot, in that surge, like a horse- shoe; think of that—hissing-hot—think of that, Master [Brook].