"LORD BRUMPTON. Ha! ha! ha! Sable, thou'rt a very impudent fellow. Half a crown a day to attend my decease, and dost thou reckon it to me?" "SABLE.... I have a book at home, which I call my doomsday-book, where I have every man of quality's age and distemper in town, and know when you should drop. Nay, my lord, if you had reflected upon your mortality half so much as poor I have for you, you would not desire to return to life thus--in short, I cannot keep this a secret, under the whole money I am to have for burying you." * * * * * Of course Lady Brumpton is discomfited and disgraced at the end of the play, and, of course, Lord Brumpton is reconciled to his son--for Steele took care that virtue should be rewarded and the moral code otherwise preserved. As to her ladyship, who has proved a very entertaining sort of villain, we shall take leave of her in one of the best scenes of the comedy: "WIDOW. _[Reading the names of the visitors who have called to leave their condolences]_ Mrs. Frances and Mrs. Winnifred Glebe, who are they?" "TATTLEAID. They are the country great fortunes, have been out of town this whole year; they are those whom your ladyship said upon being very well-born took upon them to be very ill-bred." "WIDOW. Did I say so? Really I think it was apt enough; now I remember them. Lady Wrinkle--oh, that smug old woman! there is no enduring her affectation of youth; but I plague her; I always ask whether her daughter in Wiltshire has a grandchild yet or not. Lady Worth--I can't bear her company; [_aside_] she has so much of that virtue in her heart which I have in mouth only. Mrs. After-day--Oh, that's she that was the great beauty, the mighty toast about town, that's just come out of the small-pox; she is horribly pitted they say; I long to see her, and plague her with my condolence.... But you are sure these other ladies suspect not in the least that I know of their coming? "TAT. No, dear madam, they are to ask for me. "WIDOW. I hear a coach. [_Exit_ TATTLEAID.] I have now an exquisite pleasure in the thought of surpassing my Lady Sly, who pretends to have out-grieved the whole town for her husband. They are certainly coming. Oh, no! here let me--thus let me sit and think. [_Widow on her couch; while she is raving, as to herself_, TATTLEAID _softly introduces the ladies_.] Wretched, disconsolate, as I am!... Alas! alas! Oh! oh! I swoon! I expire! [_Faints_. "SECOND LADY. Pray, Mrs. Tattleaid, bring something that is cordial to her. [_Exit_ TATTLEAID. "THIRD LADY. Indeed, madam, you should have patience; his lordship was old. To die is but going before in a journey we must all take. _Enter_ TATTLEAID, _loaded with bottles_; THIRD LADY _takes a bottle from her and drinks_. "FOURTH LADY. Lord, how my Lady Fleer drinks! I have heard, indeed, but never could believe it of her. [_Drinks also_.