BELVIL
Sufficiently splendid, if I may judge from your appearance.

MR. H.
My figure—­

BELVIL
Airy, gay, and imposing.

MR. H.
My parts—­

BELVIL
Bright.

MR. H.
My conversation—­

BELVIL
Equally remote from flippancy and taciturnity.

MR. H.
But then my name—­damn my name.

BELVIL
Childish!

MR. H. Not so.  Oh, Belvil, you are blest with one which sighing virgins may repeat without a blush, and for it change the paternal.  But what virgin of any delicacy (and I require some in a wife) would endure to be called Mrs.——?

BELVIL Ha! ha! ha! most absurd.  Did not Clementina Falconbridge, the romantic Clementina Falconbridge, fancy Tommy Potts? and Rosabella Sweetlips sacrifice her mellifluous appellative to Jack Deady?  Matilda her cousin married a Gubbins, and her sister Amelia a Clutterbuck.

MR. H.
Potts is tolerable, Deady is sufferable, Gubbins is bearable, and
Clutterbuck is endurable, but Ho—­

BELVIL
Hush, Jack, don’t betray yourself.  But you are really ashamed of the
family name?

MR. H.
Aye, and of my father that begot me, and my father’s father, and all
their forefathers that have borne it since the conquest.

BELVIL
But how do you know the women are so squeamish?

MR. H. I have tried them.  I tell you there is neither maiden of sixteen nor widow of sixty but would turn up their noses at it.  I have been refused by nineteen virgins, twenty-nine relicts, and two old maids.

BELVIL
That was hard indeed, Jack.

MR. H. Parsons have stuck at publishing the banns, because they averred it was a heathenish name; parents have lingered their consent, because they suspected it was a fictitious name; and rivals have declined my challenges, because they pretended it was an ungentlemanly name.

BELVIL
Ha, ha, ha, but what course do you mean to pursue?

MR. H.
To engage the affections of some generous girl, who will be content to
take me as Mr. H.

BELVIL
Mr. H.?

MR. H.
Yes, that is the name I go by here; you know one likes to be as near the
truth as possible.

BELVIL
Certainly.  But what then? to get her to consent—­

MR. H. To accompany me to the altar without a name—­in short to suspend her curiosity (that is all) till the moment the priest shall pronounce the irrevocable charm, which makes two names one.

BELVIL
And that name—­and then she must be pleased, ha, Jack?

MR. H. Exactly such a girl it has been my fortune to meet with, heark’e (whispers)—­(musing) yet hang it, ’tis cruel to betray her confidence.

BELVIL
But the family name, Jack?

MR. H.
As you say, the family name must be perpetuated.

BELVIL
Though it be but a homely one.