Ela.  Dost know how precious time is, and dost thou fool it away thus?  What said he to my Letter?

Scar.  What should he say?

Ela.  Why, a hundred dear soft things of Love, kiss it as often, and bless me for my Goodness.

Scar.  Why, so he did.

Ela.  Ask thee a thousand Questions of my Health after my last night’s fright.

Scar.  So he did.

Ela.  Expressing all the kind concern Love cou’d inspire, for the Punishment my Father has inflicted on me, for entertaining him at my Window last night.

Scar.  All this he did.

Ela.  And for my being confin’d a Prisoner to my Apartment, without the hope or almost possibility of seeing him any more.

Scar.  There I think you are a little mistaken; for besides the Plot that I have laid to bring you together all this Night,—­there are such Stratagems a brewing, not only to bring you together, but with your Father’s consent too; such a Plot, Madam—­

Ela.  Ay, that would be worthy of thy Brain; prithee what?—­

Scar.  Such a Device—­

Ela.  I’m impatient.

Scar.  Such a Conundrum,—­Well, if there be wise Men and Conjurers in the World, they are intriguing Lovers.

Ela.  Out with it.

Scar.  You must know, Madam, your Father (my Master, the Doctor) is a little whimsical, romantick, or Don-Quicksottish, or so.

Ela.  Or rather mad.

Scar.  That were uncivil to be supposed by me; but lunatic we may call him, without breaking the Decorum of good Manners; for he is always travelling to the Moon.

Ela.  And so religiously believes there is a World there, that he Discourses as gravely of the People, their Government, Institutions, Laws, Manners, Religion, and Constitution, as if he had been bred a Machiavel there.

Scar.  How came he thus infected first?

Ela.  With reading foolish Books, Lucian’s Dialogue of the Lofty Traveller, who flew up to the Moon, and thence to Heaven; an heroick Business, call’d The Man in the Moon, if you’ll believe a Spaniard, who was carried thither, upon an Engine drawn by wild Geese; with another Philosophical Piece, A Discourse of the World in the Moon; with a thousand other ridiculous Volumes, too hard to name.

Scar.  Ay, this reading of Books is a pernicious thing.  I was like to have run mad once, reading Sir John Mandevil;—­but to the business,—­I went, as you know, to Don Cinthio’s Lodgings, where I found him with his dear Friend Charmante, laying their Heads together for a Farce.

Ela.  Farce!

Scar.  Ay, a Farce, which shall be call’d,—­The World in the Moon:  Wherein your Father shall be so impos’d on, as shall bring matters most magnificently about.