[Enter Lucetta]

LUCETTA        Madam, dinner is ready, and your father stays.

JULIA  Well, let us go.

LUCETTA What, shall these papers lie like tell-tales here?

JULIA If you respect them, best to take them up.

LUCETTA Nay, I was taken up for laying them down.

Yet here they shall not lie, for catching cold.

JULIA I see you have a month’s mind to them.

LUCETTA Ay, madam, you may say what sights you see–

I see things too, although you judge I wink.

JULIA Come, come, will’t please you go?

Exeunt                                     (1.2.131-140)

 

If Lucetta’s been watching, she finally takes pity and decides that enough is enough; either way, dinner is ready, and your father stays. Your father’s waiting for you—the implication is that there is no mother, that Julia is the lady of the house? Alright then. Let us go. Perhaps a slight note of embarrassment, or disconnect, as Julia is returned to the everyday, to the realisation that this is a world with other people in it, and dinner. But, what, shall these papers like tell-tales here? Are you going to leave the evidence? If you respect them, best to take them up. You pick them up, if you care about it so much. Julia’s back to being defensive, moody. (Mostly this is theatrical expedience: Julia may well not have been able to pick up everything, especially if they’re outdoors and there’s been a breeze, and it would be messy and annoying to leave rubbish on stage, being trod into the rushes—if there are rushes—and so there’s enough slack in the dialogue here for the last bits to be retrieved.) Nay, I was taken up for laying them down. I’ve been told off already for dropping them! Yet here they shall not lie, for catching cold. Well, we can’t just leave them lying around. (Does for catching cold glance at Julia’s little fantasy, the named scraps of paper as puppets for herself and Proteus, making love? Not impossibly, but it’s probably more just an idiomatic way of saying, can’t sit around waiting to catch a cold.) Most likely they both retrieve the bits of paper; Julia still has to needle a bit: I see you have a month’s mind to them. You really seem to want them! to be longing for them, in your alacrity to retrieve every last bit? It’s a total projection, not least because Lucetta is a servant doing her job. So she has the last word, in effect: ay, madam, you may say what sights you see—I see things too, although you judge I wink. Have a go at me all you like, but I saw (and heard) what you were up to there—and I know about the letter, and about you and Proteus. You need me on your side, to look the other way and keep your secrets. Remember that. Julia gets the message; point taken. Come, come, will’t please you go? Let’s go then.