"Lord T. Why, madam, if you won't hear of them, how can I ever hope to see you mend them? "Lady T. Why, I don't intend to mend them--I can't mend them--you know I have try'd to do it an hundred times, and--it hurts me so--I can't bear it! "Lord T. And I, madam, can't bear this daily licentious abuse of your time and character. "Lady T. Abuse! astonishing! when the universe knows, I am never better company than when I am doing what I have a mind to! But to see this world! that men can never get over that silly spirit of contradiction--why, but last Thursday, now--there you wisely amended one of my faults, as you call them--you insisted upon my not going to the masquerade--and pray, what was the consequence? Was not I as cross as the Devil, all the night after? Was not I forc'd to get company at home? And was it not almost three o'clock in the morning before I was able to come to myself again? And then the fault is not mended neither--for next time I shall only have twice the inclination to go: so that all this mending and mending, you see, is but darning an old ruffle, to make it worse than it was before. "Lord T. Well, the manner of women's living, of late, is insupportable, and one way or other-- "Lady T. It's to be mended, I suppose! Why, so it may, but then, my dear lord, you must give one time--and when things are at worst, you know, they may mend themselves! Ha! ha! "Lord T. Madam, I am not in a humour, now, to trifle. "Lady T. Why, then, my lord, one word of fair argument--to talk with you, your own way now--you complain of my late hours, and I of your early ones--so far we are even, you'll allow--but pray which gives us the best figure, in the eye of the polite world, my active, spirited three in the morning, or your dull, drowsy, eleven at night? Now, I think, one has the air of a woman of quality, and t'other of a plodding mechanic, that goes to bed betimes, that he may rise early, to open his shop--faugh! "LORD T. Fy, fy, madam! is this your way of reasoning? 'Tis time to wake you then. 'Tis not your ill hours alone that disturb me, but as often the ill company that occasion those ill hours. "LADY T. Sure I don't understand you now, my lord; what ill company do I keep? "LORD T. Why, at best, women that lose their money, and men that win it! or, perhaps, men that are voluntary bubbles at one game, in hopes a lady will give them fair play at another.[A] Then that unavoidable mixture with known rakes, conceal'd thieves, and sharpers in embroidery--or what, to me, is still more shocking, that herd of familiar chattering, crop-ear'd coxcombs, who are so often like monkeys, there would be no knowing them asunder, but that their tails hang from their head, and the monkey's grows where it should do.