MRS. FRAIL. Now you talk of conjunction, my brother Foresight has cast both their nativities, and prognosticates an admiral and an eminent justice of the peace to be the issue male of their two bodies; ’tis the most superstitious old fool! He would have persuaded me that this was an unlucky day, and would not let me come abroad. But I invented a dream, and sent him to Artimedorus for interpretation, and so stole out to see you. Well, and what will you give me now? Come, I must have something. VAL. Step into the next room, and I’ll give you something. SCAN. Ay, we’ll all give you something. MRS. FRAIL. Well, what will you all give me? VAL. Mine’s a secret. MRS. FRAIL. I thought you would give me something that would be a trouble to you to keep. VAL. And Scandal shall give you a good name. MRS. FRAIL. That’s more than he has for himself. And what will you give me, Mr. Tattle? TATT. I? My soul, madam. MRS. FRAIL. Pooh! No, I thank you, I have enough to do to take care of my own. Well, but I’ll come and see you one of these mornings. I hear you have a great many pictures. TATT. I have a pretty good collection, at your service, some originals. SCAN. Hang him, he has nothing but the Seasons and the Twelve Cæsars—paltry copies—and the Five Senses, as ill-represented as they are in himself, and he himself is the only original you will see there. MRS. FRAIL. Ay, but I hear he has a closet of beauties. SCAN. Yes; all that have done him favours, if you will believe him. MRS. FRAIL. Ay, let me see those, Mr. Tattle. TATT. Oh, madam, those are sacred to love and contemplation. No man but the painter and myself was ever blest with the sight. MRS. FRAIL. Well, but a woman— TATT. Nor woman, till she consented to have her picture there too—for then she’s obliged to keep the secret. SCAN. No, no; come to me if you’d see pictures. MRS. FRAIL. You? SCAN. Yes, faith; I can shew you your own picture, and most of your acquaintance to the life, and as like as at Kneller’s. MRS. FRAIL. O lying creature! Valentine, does not he lie? I can’t believe a word he says. VAL. No indeed, he speaks truth now. For as Tattle has pictures of all that have granted him favours, he has the pictures of all that have refused him: if satires, descriptions, characters, and lampoons are pictures. SCAN. Yes; mine are most in black and white. And yet there are some set out in their true colours, both men and women. I can shew you pride, folly, affectation, wantonness, inconstancy, covetousness, dissimulation, malice and ignorance, all in one piece. Then I can shew you lying, foppery, vanity, cowardice, bragging, lechery, impotence, and ugliness in another piece; and yet one of these is a celebrated beauty, and t’other a professed beau. I have paintings too, some pleasant enough. MRS. FRAIL. Come, let’s hear ’em. SCAN. Why, I have a beau in a _bagnio_, cupping for a complexion, and sweating for a shape. MRS. FRAIL. So.