MRS. CROAKER. We have just come, my dear Honeywood, from the auction. There was the old deaf dowager, as usual, bidding like a fury against herself. And then so curious in antiques! herself the most genuine piece of antiquity in the whole collection. HONEYW. Excuse me, ladies, if some uneasiness from friendship makes me unfit to share in this good humour: I know you'll pardon me. MRS. CROAKER. I vow, he seems as melancholy as if he had taken a dose of my husband this morning. Well, if Richland here can pardon you, I must. MISS RICH. You would seem to insinuate, madam, that I have particular reasons for being disposed to refuse it. MRS. CROAKER. Whatever I insinuate, my dear, don't be so ready to wish an explanation. MISS RICH. I own I should be sorry Mr. Honeywood's long friendship and mine should be misunderstood. HONEYW. There's no answering for others, madam; but I hope you'll never find me presuming to offer more than the most delicate friendship may readily allow. MISS RICH. And, I shall be prouder of such a tribute from you, than the most passionate professions from others. HONEYW. My own sentiments, madam: friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves. MISS RICH. And, without a compliment, I know none more disinterested or more capable of friendship than Mr. Honeywood. MRS. CROAKER. And indeed I know nobody that has more friends, at least among the ladies. Miss Fruzz, Miss Odbody, and Miss Winterbottom, praise him in all companies. As for Miss Biddy Bundle, she's his professed admirer. MISS RICH. Indeed! an admirer! I did not know, sir, you were such a favourite there. But is she seriously so handsome? Is she the mighty thing talked of? HONEYW. The town, madam, seldom begins to praise a lady's beauty, till she's beginning to lose it. [_Smiling._ MRS. CROAKER. But she's resolved never to lose it, it seems; for as her natural face decays, her skill improves in making the artificial one. Well, nothing diverts me more than one of those fine old dressy things, who thinks to conceal her age by everywhere exposing her person; sticking herself up in the front of a side-box; trailing through a minuet at Almack's; and then, in the public gardens, looking for all the world like one of the painted ruins of the place. HONEYW. Every age has its admirers, ladies. While you, perhaps, are trading among the warmer climates of youth, there ought to be some to carry on a useful commerce in the frozen latitudes beyond fifty. MISS RICH. But then the mortifications they must suffer before they can be fitted out for traffic! I have seen one of them fret a whole morning at her hair-dresser, when all the fault was her face. HONEYW. And yet I'll engage, has carried that face at last to a very good market. This good-natured town, madam, has husbands, like spectacles, to fit every age, from fifteen to four-score.