WIT. No, no, he comes to his aunt’s, my Lady Wishfort; pox on him, I shall be troubled with him too; what shall I do with the fool? PET. Beg him for his estate, that I may beg you afterwards, and so have but one trouble with you both. WIT. O rare Petulant, thou art as quick as fire in a frosty morning; thou shalt to the Mall with us, and we’ll be very severe. PET. Enough; I’m in a humour to be severe. MIRA. Are you? Pray then walk by yourselves. Let not us be accessory to your putting the ladies out of countenance with your senseless ribaldry, which you roar out aloud as often as they pass by you, and when you have made a handsome woman blush, then you think you have been severe. PET. What, what? Then let ’em either show their innocence by not understanding what they hear, or else show their discretion by not hearing what they would not be thought to understand. MIRA. But hast not thou then sense enough to know that thou ought’st to be most ashamed thyself when thou hast put another out of countenance? PET. Not I, by this hand: I always take blushing either for a sign of guilt or ill-breeding. MIRA. I confess you ought to think so. You are in the right, that you may plead the error of your judgment in defence of your practice. Where modesty’s ill manners, ’tis but fit That impudence and malice pass for wit. ACT II.—SCENE I. _St. James’s Park_. MRS. FAINALL _and_ MRS. MARWOOD. MRS. FAIN. Ay, ay, dear Marwood, if we will be happy, we must find the means in ourselves, and among ourselves. Men are ever in extremes; either doting or averse. While they are lovers, if they have fire and sense, their jealousies are insupportable: and when they cease to love (we ought to think at least) they loathe, they look upon us with horror and distaste, they meet us like the ghosts of what we were, and as from such, fly from us. MRS. MAR. True, ’tis an unhappy circumstance of life that love should ever die before us, and that the man so often should outlive the lover. But say what you will, ’tis better to be left than never to have been loved. To pass our youth in dull indifference, to refuse the sweets of life because they once must leave us, is as preposterous as to wish to have been born old, because we one day must be old. For my part, my youth may wear and waste, but it shall never rust in my possession. MRS. FAIN. Then it seems you dissemble an aversion to mankind only in compliance to my mother’s humour. MRS. MAR. Certainly. To be free, I have no taste of those insipid dry discourses with which our sex of force must entertain themselves apart from men. We may affect endearments to each other, profess eternal friendships, and seem to dote like lovers; but ’tis not in our natures long to persevere. Love will resume his empire in our breasts, and every heart, or soon or late, receive and readmit him as its lawful tyrant.