MRS. HARD. O! sir, you're only pleased to say so. We country persons can have no manner at all. I'm in love with the town, and that serves to raise me above some of our neighbouring rustics; but who can have a manner, that has never seen the Pantheon, the Grotto Gardens, the Borough, and such places, where the nobility chiefly resort? All I can do, is to enjoy London at second-hand. I take care to know every tête-à-tête from the Scandalous Magazine, and have all the fashions, as they come out, in a letter from the two Miss Rickets of Crooked-lane. Pray how do you like this head, Mr. Hastings? HAST. Extremely elegant and _dégagée_, upon my word, madam. Your friseur is a Frenchman, I suppose? MRS. HARD. I protest I dressed it myself from a print in the Ladies' Memorandum Book for the last year. HAST. Indeed! such a head in a side-box, at the play-house, would draw as many gazers, as my lady Mayoress at a city ball. MRS. HARD. I vow, since inoculation began, there is no such thing to be seen as a plain woman; so one must dress a little particular, or one may escape in the crowd. HAST. But that can never be your case, madam, in any dress. _Bowing._ [Illustration: HASTINGS.—"_Extremely elegant and dégagée, upon my word, madam._"—_p._ 344. ] MRS. HARD. Yet what signifies _my_ dressing when I have such a piece of antiquity by my side as Mr. Hardcastle? all I can say will not argue down a single button from his clothes. I have often wanted him to throw off his great flaxen wig, and where he was bald, to plaster it over, like my lord Pately, with powder. HAST. You are right, madam; for as, among the ladies, there are none ugly, so, among the men, there are none old. MRS. HARD. But what do you think his answer was? Why, with his usual gothic vivacity, he said, I only wanted him to throw off his wig, to convert it into a tête for my own wearing. HAST. Intolerable! At your age you may wear what you please, and it must become you. MRS. HARD. Pray, Mr. Hastings, what do you take to be the most fashionable age about town? HAST. Some time ago, forty was all the mode; but I'm told the ladies intend to bring up fifty for the ensuing winter. MISS HARD. Seriously! then I shall be too young for the fashion. HAST. No lady begins now to put on jewels till she's past forty. For instance, Miss there, in a polite circle, would be considered as a child, as a mere maker of samplers. MRS. HARD. And yet Mrs. Niece thinks herself as much a woman, and is as fond of jewels, as the oldest of us all. HAST. Your niece, is she? and that young gentleman, a brother of yours, I should presume? MRS. HARD. My son, sir. They are contracted to each other. Observe their little sports. They fall in and out ten times a day, as if they were man and wife already. (_To them._) Well, Tony, child, what soft things are you saying to your cousin Constance this evening.