n'. He 's jest a snooper.

(_She sits on the floor, with her head on the Duke's knee. She is
staunch to the last--a true cook for a pirates' band._)

JOE: You will transport them in chains to London to wait their
sentence by a court of law.

SAILOR CAPTAIN: Yes, your majesty.

JOE: You mistake me, Captain. My father is the King of England. I am
but the Prince of Wales.

SAILOR CAPTAIN: Alas, sire, we bring you heavy news. Your Royal
Father, the King of England, has been killed, fighting gloriously on
the soil of France.

JOE: Bear with me. My grief has leaped the channel. My thought is a
silent mourner at my father's grave. Shall a King sink to the measure
of a mound of turf for the tread of a peasant's foot? Where is now the
ermine robe, the glistening crown, the harness of a fighting hour, the
sceptre that marked the giddy office, the voice, the flashing eye that
stirred a coward to bravery, the iron gauntlet shaking in the pallid
face of France? All--all covered by a spadeful of country earth.
Captain, has Calais fallen to our army's siege? Are the French lilies
plucked for England's boutoniere?

SAILOR CAPTAIN: Calais has fallen.

JOE: Then God be praised even in this hard hour. By heaven's help I
throw off the idle practice of my youth. The empty tricks and trivial
habits of the careless years, I renounce them all. A wind has scoured
the sullen clouds of youth. My past has been a ragged garment, stained
with heedless hours. Tonight I cast it off, like a coat that is out at
elbow. My father henceforth lives in me.

(_Meg, at her entrance, has sniffed the wasted grog. Her nose, surer
than a hazel wand, inclines above the hearth. She bends to the lovely
puddle. She employs and tastes her dripping finger--covertly, with
mannerly regard to the Prince's rhetoric--sucking in secret his good
health and happy returns, so to speak. The liquor warms her
tongue--not to drunkenness, but to ease and comfort. The hearth-stone
is her tavern chair._)

MEG: (_not boisterously--with just a flip of her trickling finger, as
if it were a foaming cup_). Hooray! I wants ter be the first, yer
Majesty, ter swear allegiance to yer throne. I saw yer future in the
glass. Ol' Meg knowed yer, like she had rocked yer in the cradle. I
told yer I would come in yer hour o' danger. It was me reached through
the winder fer the gun ter save yer. It was me whistle that yer heard,
dearie, hurryin' up the sailormen as Betsy went ter fetch.