_Squire Sul_. Then you may let it alone. _Mrs. Sul_. But I must tell you, sir, that this is not to be borne. _Squire Sul_. I 'm glad on't. _Mrs. Sul_. What is the reason, sir, that you use me thus inhumanly? _Squire Sul_. Scrub! _Scrub_. Sir! {118} _Squire Sul_. Get things ready to shave my head. [_Exit_. _Mrs. Sul_. Have a care of coming near his temples, Scrub, for fear you meet something there that may turn the edge of your razor.--[_Exit Scrub_.] Inveterate stupidity I did you ever know so hard, so obstinate a spleen as his? O sister, sister! I shall never ha' good of the beast till I get him to town; London, dear London, is the place for managing and breaking a husband. _Dor_. And has not a husband the same opportunities there for humbling a wife? {129} _Mrs. Sul_. No, no, child, 'tis a standing maxim in conjugal discipline, that when a man would enslave his wife, he hurries her into the country; and when a lady would be arbitrary with her husband, she wheedles her booby up to town. A man dare not play the tyrant in London, because there are so many examples to encourage the subject to rebel. O Dorinda! Dorinda! a fine woman may do anything in London: o' my conscience, she may raise an army of forty thousand men. {139} _Dor_. I fancy, sister, you have a mind to be trying your power that way here in Lichfield; you have drawn the French count to your colours already. _Mrs. Sul_. The French are a people that can't live without their gallantries. _Dor_. And some English that I know, sister, are not averse to such amusements. _Mrs. Sul_. Well, sister, since the truth must out, it may do as well now as hereafter; I think, one way to rouse my lethargic, sottish husband, is to give him a rival: security begets negligence in all people, and men must be alarmed to make 'em alert-in their duty. Women are like pictures, of no value in the hands of a fool, till he hears men of sense bid high for the purchase. _Dor_. This might do, sister, if my brother's understanding were to be convinced into a passion for you; but, I fancy, there's a natural aversion on his side; and I fancy, sister, that you don't come much behind him, if you dealt fairly. {159} _Mrs. Sul_. I own it, we are united contradictions, fire and water: but I could be contented, with a great many other wives, to humour the censorious mob, and give the world an appearance of living well with my husband, could I bring him but to dissemble a little kindness to keep me in countenance. _Dor_. But how do you know, sister, but that, instead of rousing your husband by this artifice to a counterfeit kindness, he should awake in a real fury? _Mrs. Sul_. Let him: if I can't entice him to the one, I would provoke him to the other. {170} _Dor_. But how must I behave myself between ye? _Mrs. Sul_. You must assist me.