MONTANUS
[Footnote 1: garment. In what modern expression is this meaning of the
word retained?]
"No doubt," quoth Ganymede, "this protestation grew from one full of
passions."
"I am of that mind too," quoth Aliena, "but see, I pray, when poor
women seek to keep themselves chaste, how men woo them with many
feigned promises; alluring with sweet words as the Sirens, and after
proving as trothless as Aeneas. Thus promised Demophoon to his
Phyllis, but who at last grew more false?"
"The reason was," quoth Ganymede, "that they were women's sons, and
took that fault of their mother, for if man had grown from man, as
Adam did from the earth, men had never been troubled with
inconstancy."
"Leave off," quoth Aliena, "to taunt thus bitterly, or else I'll pull
off your page's apparel, and whip you, as Venus doth her wantons, with
nettles."
"So you will," quoth Ganymede, "persuade me to flattery, and that
needs not: but come, seeing we have found here by this fount the tract
of shepherds by their madrigals and roundelays, let us forward; for
either we shall find some folds, sheepcotes, or else some cottages
wherein for a day or two to rest.
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