MELESINDA Malicious creatures! Believe me it is a cross, and nothing but a cross. FIRST LADY A cross, I believe, you would willingly hang at. MELESINDA Intolerable spite! (MR. H. _is announced_.) (_Enter_ MR. H.) FIRST LADY O, Mr. H. we are so glad---- SECOND LADY We have been so dull---- THIRD LADY So perfectly lifeless----You owe it to us, to be more than commonly entertaining. MR. H. Ladies, this is so obliging---- FOURTH LADY O, Mr. H. those ranunculas you said were dying, pretty things, they have got up---- FIFTH LADY I have worked that sprig you commended--I want you to come---- MR. H. Ladies---- SIXTH LADY I have sent for that piece of music from London. MR. H. The Mozart--(_seeing Melesinda_.)--Melesinda! SEVERAL LADIES AT ONCE Nay positively, Melesinda, you shan't engross him all to yourself. (_While the Ladies are pressing about MR. H. the Gentlemen shew signs of displeasure_.) FIRST GENTLEMAN We shan't be able to edge in a word, now this coxcomb is come. SECOND GENTLEMAN Damn him, I will affront him. FIRST GENTLEMAN Sir, with your leave, I have a word to say to one of these ladies. SECOND GENTLEMAN If we could be heard---- (_The ladies pay no attention but to_ MR. H.) MR. H. You see, gentlemen, how the matter stands. (_Hums an air_.) I am not my own master: positively I exist and breathe but to be agreeable to these----Did you speak? FIRST GENTLEMAN And affects absence of mind, Puppy! MR. H. Who spoke of absence of mind, did you, Madam? How do you do, Lady Wearwell--how do? I did not see your ladyship before--what was I about to say--O--absence of mind. I am the most unhappy dog in that way, sometimes spurt out the strangest things--the most mal-a-propos--without meaning to give the least offence, upon my honour--sheer absence of mind--things I would have given the world not to have said. FIRST GENTLEMAN Do you hear the coxcomb? FIRST LADY Great wits, they say---- SECOND LADY Your fine geniuses are most given---- THIRD LADY Men of bright parts are commonly too vivacious---- MR. H. But you shall hear. I was to dine the other day at a great nabob's, that must be nameless, who, between ourselves, is strongly suspected of--being very rich, that's all. John, my valet, who knows my foible, cautioned me, while he was dressing me, as he usually does where he thinks there's a danger of my committing a _lapsus_, to take care in my conversation how I made any allusion direct or indirect to presents --you understand me? I set out double charged with my fellow's consideration and my own, and, to do myself justice, behaved with tolerable circumspection for the first half hour or so--till at last a gentleman in company, who was indulging a free vein of raillery at the expense of the ladies, stumbled upon that expression of the poet, which calls them "fair defects." FIRST LADY It is Pope, I believe, who says it.