as I was saying, I will come and see
you to-morrow; but now don't let your wife put herself in a fuss for
me: don't alter your own plain way; for I am not proud, I assure
you, nor above my old friends; though I thank God, I am pretty well
in the world."

To all this flourishing speech Mr. Worthy coolly answered, that
certainly worldly prosperity ought never make any man proud, since
it is God who giveth strength to get riches, and without his
blessing, _'tis in vain to rise up early, and to eat the bread of
carefulness_.

About the middle of the next day Mr. Bragwell reached Mr. Worthy's
neat and pleasant dwelling. He found every thing in the reverse of
his own. It had not so many ornaments, but it had more comforts. And
when he saw his friend's good old-fashioned arm-chair in a warm
corner, he gave a sigh to think how his own had been banished to
make room for his daughter's piano-forte. Instead of made flowers in
glass cases, and tea-chests and screens too fine to be used, which
he saw at home, and about which he was cautioned, and scolded as
often as he came near them; his daughters watching his motions with
the same anxiety as they would have watched the motions of a cat in
a china shop. Instead of this, I say, he saw some neat shelves of
good books for the service of the family, and a small medicine chest
for the benefit of the poor.

Mrs. Worthy and her daughters had prepared a plain but neat and good
dinner. The tarts were so excellent that Bragwell felt a secret kind
of regret that his own daughters were too genteel to do any thing so
very useful. Indeed he had been always unwilling to believe that any
thing which was very proper and very necessary, could be so
extremely vulgar and unbecoming as his daughters were always
declaring it to be. And his late experience of the little comfort he
found at home, inclined him now still more strongly to suspect that
things were not so right there as he had been made to suppose. But
it was in vain to speak; for his daughters constantly stopped his
mouth by a favorite saying of theirs, which equally indicated
affectation and vulgarity, that it was better to be out of the world
than out of the fashion.

Soon after dinner the women went out to their several employments;
and Mr. Worthy being left alone with his guest, the following
discourse took place:

_Bragwell._ You have a couple of sober, pretty looking girls,
Worthy; but I wonder they don't tiff off a little more.