Page:Miscellaneous Plays 1.pdf/195

Rh

No sensible woman dislikes an agreeable man because he may be past the heyday of his life. My niece here (pointing to Miss Martin) has often said to her giddy companions, that an agreeable man of forty is preferable to the frivolous young men of the world that one meets with every where now-a-days.

You would oblige me very much, my dear madam, if you would speak your own sentiments, without doing me the honour to make me so much wiser than I pretend to be.

If your ladyship pleases we shall drop this subject. I am obliged to you for your friendly advice, but it is not in my power to profit by it; for I cannot, for the mere love of being married, yoke myself to a bad wife; and I am so capricious and so strange with my old rooted habits, that I really don't deserve to have a good one.

That is the very case with him, madam; he must have, forsooth, such a woman as the sun never beheld: a woman of wit who holds her tongue; a good housewife who teizes nobody with her