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mood to be played with. I can't approve of every farce you please to play off in my family, nor to have my relations affronted, and driven from my house for your entertainment.

Mar. Indeed, sir, I treated Royston better than he deserved, for he would not let me have time to give a civil denial, but ran on planning settlements and jointures, and a hundred things besides; I could just get in my word to stop his career with a flat refusal, as he was about to provide for our descendants of the third generation. O! if you had seen his face then, uncle!

With. I know very well how you have treated him.

Ag. Dont be angry, sir. What does a man like Royston care for a refusal? he is only angrv that he can't take the law of her for laughing at him.

With. Let this be as it may, I dont chuse to have my house in a perpetual bustle from morning till night, with your plots and your pastimes. There is no more order nor distinction kept up in my house, than if it were a cabin in Kamschatka, and common to a whole tribe. I can't set my nose into a room of it but I find some visitor, or showman, or millener's apprentice, loitering about: my best books are cast upon footstools and window-seats, and my library is littered over with work-bags: dogs, cats, and kittens, take possession of every chair, and refuse to be disturbed: kitchen wenches flaunt up stairs with their new top-knots