Then she set two or three female instruments to discourse her case in all their gossips’ companies, and at the tea-tables wherever they came, and to magnify the lady’s prudence in refusing such a man, and what an escape she had had in being clear of him.

‘Why,’ says a lady to one of these emissaries, ’what was the matter?  I thought she was like to be very well married.’

‘Oh no, Madam! by no means,’ says the emissary.

‘Why, Madam,’ says another lady, ’we all know Mr H——­; he is a very pretty sort of a man.’

‘Ay, Madam,’ says the emissary again, ’but you know a pretty man is not all that is required.’

‘Nay,’ says the lady again, ’I don’t mean so; he is no beauty, no rarity that way; but I mean a clever good sort of a man in his business, such as we call a pretty tradesman.’

‘Ay,’ says the lady employed, ‘but that is not all neither.’

‘Why,’ says the other lady, ’he has a very good trade too, and lives in good credit.’

‘Yes,’ says malice, ’he has some of the first, but not too much of the last, I suppose.’

‘No!’ says the lady; ‘I thought his credit had been very good.’

‘If it had, I suppose,’ says the first, ’the match had not been broke off.’

‘Why,’ says the lady, ‘I understood it was broken off on his side.’

‘And so did I,’ says another.

‘And so did I, indeed,’ says a third.

‘Oh, Madam!’ says the tool, ‘nothing like it, I assure you.’

‘Indeed,’ says another, I understood he had quitted Mrs——­, because she had not fortune enough for him, and that he courted another certain lady, whom we all know.’

Then the ladies fell to talking of the circumstances of his leaving her, and how he had broken from her abruptly and unmannerly, and had been too free with her character; at which the first lady, that is to say, the emissary, or tool, as I call her, took it up a little warmly, thus:—­

1. Lady.—­Well, you see, ladies, how easily a lady’s reputation may be injured; I hope you will not go away with it so.

2. Lady.—­Nay, we have all of us a respect for Mrs——­, and some of us visit there sometimes; I believe none of us would be willing to injure her.

1. Lady.—­But indeed, ladies, she is very much injured in that story.

2. Lady.—­Indeed, it is generally understood so, and every body believes it.

1. Lady.—­I can assure you it is quite otherwise in fact.

2. Lady.—­I believe he reports it so himself, and that with some very odd things about the lady too.

1. Lady.—­The more base unworthy fellow he.

2. Lady.—­Especially if he knows it to be otherwise.

1. Lady.—­Especially if he knows the contrary to be true, Madam.

2. Lady.—­Is that possible?  Did he not refuse her, then?

1. Lady.—­Nothing like it, Madam; but just the contrary.