, but you must be sparing of it, my dear nephew, amongst these
roturiers."

Miss Badge married a young gentleman of royal dignity, though shattered
fortunes, from a neighbouring island; and I trust Mrs. Mackshane has
ere this pardoned my levity. There was another person besides Miss at my
aunt's house, who did not understand my persiflage much better than Miss
herself; and that was a lady who had seen James the Second's reign, and
who was alive and as worldly as ever in King George's. I loved to be
with her: but that my little folks have access to this volume, I could
put down a hundred stories of the great old folks whom she had known in
the great old days--of George the First and his ladies, of St. John and
Marlborough, of his reigning Majesty and the late Prince of Wales, and
the causes of the quarrel between them--but my modest muse pipes for
boys and virgins. Son Miles does not care about court stories, or if he
doth, has a fresh budget from Carlton House, quite as bad as the worst
of our old Baroness. No, my dear wife, thou hast no need to shake thy
powdered locks at me! Papa is not going to scandalise his nursery with
old-world gossip, nor bring a blush over our chaste bread-and-butter.

But this piece of scandal I cannot help. My aunt used to tell it with
infinite gusto; for, to do her justice, she hated your would-be good
people, and sniggered over the faults of the self-styled righteous with
uncommon satisfaction. In her later days she had no hypocrisy, at least;
and in so far was better than some whitewashed... Well, to the story.
My Lady Warrington, one of the tallest and the most virtuous of her sex,
who had goodness for ever on her lips and "Heaven in her eye," like the
woman in Mr. Addison's tedious tragedy (which has kept the stage, from
which some others, which shall be nameless, have disappeared), had the
world in her other eye, and an exceedingly shrewd desire of pushing
herself in it. What does she do, when my marriage with your ladyship
yonder was supposed to be broken off, but attempt to play off on me
those arts which she had tried on my poor Harry with such signal ill
success, and which failed with me likewise! It was not the Beauty--Miss
Flora was for my master--(and what a master! I protest I take off my hat
at the idea of such an illustrious connexion!)--it was Dora, the Muse,
was set upon me to languish at me and to pity me, and to read even my
godless tragedy, and applaud me and console me.