“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.

[Footnote A:  Women gambled as passionately as did the men in the early part of the eighteenth century.  Ashton quotes the following from the “Gaming Lady”:  “She’s a profuse lady, tho’ of a miserly temper, whose covetous disposition is the very cause of her extravagancy; for the desire of success wheedles her ladyship to play, and the incident charges and disappointments that attend it make her as expensive to her husband as his coach and six horses.  When an unfortunate night has happen’d to empty her cabinet, she has many shifts to replenish her pockets.  Her jewels are carry’d privately into Lombard street, and fortune is to be tempted the next night with another sum, borrowed of my lady’s goldsmith at the extortion of a pawnbroker; and if that fails, then she sells off her wardrobe, to the great grief of her maids; stretches her credit amongst those she deals with, or makes her waiting woman dive into the bottom of her trunk, and lug out her green net purse full of old Jacobuses, in hopes to recover her losses by a turn of fortune, that she may conceal her bad luck from the knowledge of her husband.”]

“Lady T. And a husband must give eminent proof of his sense that thinks their powder puffs dangerous!

“Lord T. Their being fools, madam, is not always the husband’s security; or, if it were, fortune sometimes gives them advantages might make a thinking woman tremble.