DAM. Sit down all of you, and be comfortable. _(Hands the cake.)_ Take a bit, Miss Kitty--Pinkey, bless your bashfulness; 'tis _your_ best friend--it will prevent you ever making a fool of _yourself._ Niggle, eat in peace and thankfulness; for I have once more saved you from the abyss of matrimony. _(Loud knocking, without.)_ Ha! ha! you can't come in. Go away, woman! go away! Finish the cake, and let the artful creature knock till she's tired! Go away! [_Loud knocking continued. They sit eating the cake--NIGGLE throws all the wedding cards into the air, as the act drop descends._ END OF ACT I. ACT II. SCENE I.--_Interior of a neat cottage, door and window in flat; table on the R., a china flower-stand on it. MISS MARIA MACAW discovered, hemming a handkerchief; she takes a note from the table and reads._ MISS MAC. _(Reading.)_ "Miss Snare will be happy to have the pleasure of Miss Macaw's company to tea this evening; of course Miss Macaw's niece is included in the invitation." I am sure I have no inclination to go, but Jessy insists upon it, she is so anxious to make an acquaintance with any one, that I'm sure if the gardener were to ask her to dine with him, she would accept the invite. I hope there will no men there, the brutes. One of the chief things that has reconciled me to this country life, is the very few male creatures that I have met with here. Ah, if I had my will, the sex should be exterminated! Well, niece? _Enter MISS JESSY MEADOWS, F.E.L., with a bouquet in her hand._ MISS MEA. Ah, my dear aunt, at your needle as usual. I have been gathering flowers in our little garden--there. _(She places the bouquet in the flower-glass on the table.)_ Are they not beautiful? I love flowers--I have a passion for them. MISS MAC. You should not use such ardent expressions. It is very unseemly in a young lady to talk of having a passion for anything, whether animate or inanimate. If you begin with flowers, you may end with the same enthusiasm in behalf of a human object; and if that object were to be a man, I should tremble for the result! MISS MEA. The most natural result might be matrimony; and is there anything so very terrible in that, my dear aunt? MISS MAC. Terrible! I look upon matrimony as the general prologue to all the tragedies of life. MISS MEA. To _all_, aunt? MISS MAC. _All_. From the singular instance of the siege of Troy, to the connubial pluralities of Henry the Eighth! MISS MEA. Is it possible, aunt, that you never had an offer in all your life? MISS MAC. Never! I always expressed my antipathy to the male sex so openly, that no man ever ventured a _tête-à-tête_ with _me_; if one dared to whisper nonsense in _my_ ear, I used to turn and petrify him at once with a look---- MISS MEA. Like the Gorgon's head on the shield of Minerva--your face turned every approaching lover to stone! MISS MAC. Though I have often wished that a man _would_ have the temerity to make me a sincere proposal.