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Fal. What shall I do? I’ll creep up into the chimney.

Mrs. Ford. There they always use to discharge their birding-pieces. Creep into the kill-hole.

Fal. Where is it?

Mrs. Ford. He will seek there, on my word. Neither press, coffer, chest, trunk, well, vault, but he hath an abstract for the remembrance of such places, and goes to them by his note. There is no hiding you in the house.

Fal. I’ll go out then.

[Mrs. Page]. If you go out in your own semblance, you die, Sir John—unless you go out disguis’d.

Mrs. Ford. How might we disguise him?

Mrs. Page. Alas the day, I know not! There is no woman’s gown big enough for him; otherwise he might put on a hat, a muffler, and a kerchief, and so escape.

Fal. Good hearts, devise something; any extremity rather than a mischief.

Mrs. Ford. My maid’s aunt, the fat woman of Brainford, has a gown above.

Mrs. Page. On my word, it will serve him; she’s as big as he is. And there’s her thrumm’d hat and her muffler too. Run up, Sir John.

Mrs. Ford. Go, go, sweet Sir John. Mistress Page and I will look some linen for your head.