t,
but numbers and confusion! So that a fashionable party resembles
Smithfield market,--only a good one when plentifully stocked--and ladies
are reckoned by the score, like sheep, and their husbands by droves,
like horned cattle!

_Miss B._ Ha, ha! and the conversation--

_Handy, jun._ Oh! like the assembly--confused, vapid, and abundant; as
"How do, ma'am!--no accident at the door?--he, he!"--"Only my carriage
broke to pieces!"--"I hope you had not your pocket picked!"--"Won't you
sit down to faro?"--"Have you many to-night?"--"A few, about six
hundred!"--"Were you at Lady Overall's?"--"Oh yes; a delicious crowd,
and plenty of peas, he, he!"--and thus runs the fashionable race.

_Sir Abel._ Yes; and a precious run it is--full gallop all the way:
first they run on--then their fortune is run through--then bills are run
up--then they are run hard--then they've a run of luck--then they run
out, and then they run away!--But I'll forgive fashion all its follies
in consideration of one of its blessed laws.

_Handy, jun._ What may that be!

_Sir Abel._ That husband and wife must never be seen together.

_Enter_ SERVANT.

_Serv._ Miss Blandford, your father expects you.

_Miss B._ I hope I shall find him more composed.

_Handy, jun._ Is Sir Philip ill?

_Miss B._ His spirits are extremely depressed, and since we arrived here
this morning his dejection has dreadfully increased.

_Handy, jun._ But I hope we shall be able to laugh away despondency.

_Miss B._ Sir, if you are pleased to consider my esteem as an object
worth your possession, I know no way of obtaining it so certain as by
your shewing every attention to my dear father. [_As they are going,_

_Enter_ ASHFIELD.

_Ash._ Dame! Dame! she be come!

_Dame._ Who? Susan! our dear Susan?

_Ash._ Ees--zo--come along--Oh, Sir Abel! Lady Nelly, your spouse, do
order you to go to her directly!

_Handy, jun._ Order! you mistake--

_Sir Abel._ No, he don't--she generally prefers that word.

_Miss B._ Adieu! Sir Abel.
[_Exeunt_ MISS BLANDFORD _and_ HANDY, _jun._

_Sir Abel._ Oh! if my wife had such a pretty way with her mouth.

_Dame._ And how does Susan look?

_Ash._ That's what I do want to know, zoa come along--Woo ye
though--Missus, let's behave pratty--Zur if you pleaze, Dame and I will
let you walk along wi' us.

_Sir Abel._ How condescending! Oh, you are a pretty behaved fellow!