r Ho----

MR. H. (_Stopping him_.)
Don't name it.

BELVIL
Name what?

MR. H.
My curst, unfortunate name. I have reasons to conceal it for a time.

BELVIL
I understand you--Creditors, Jack?

MR. H.
No, I assure you.

BELVIL
Snapp'd up a ward, peradventure, and the whole Chancery at your heels?

MR. H.
I don't use to travel with such cumbersome luggage.

BELVIL
You ha'n't taken a purse?

MR. H.
To relieve you at once from all disgraceful conjectures, you must know,
'tis nothing but the sound of my name.

BELVIL
Ridiculous! 'tis true your's is none of the most romantic, but what can
that signify in a man?

MR. H.
You must understand that I am in some credit with the ladies.

BELVIL
With the ladies!

MR. H.
And truly I think not without some pretensions. My fortune--

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 na