of Crooked Lane.
Pray how do you like this head, Mr. Hastings?

HASTINGS. Extremely elegant and degagee, upon my word, madam. Your
friseur is a Frenchman, I suppose?

MRS. HARDCASTLE. I protest, I dressed it myself from a print in the
Ladies' Memorandum-book for the last year.

HASTINGS. Indeed! Such a head in a side-box at the play-house would
draw as many gazers as my Lady Mayoress at a City Ball.

MRS. HARDCASTLE. I vow, since inoculation began, there is no such
thing to be seen as a plain woman; so one must dress a little
particular, or one may escape in the crowd.

HASTINGS. But that can never be your case, madam, in any dress.
(Bowing.)

MRS. HARDCASTLE. Yet, what signifies my dressing when I have such a
piece of antiquity by my side as Mr. Hardcastle: all I can say will
never argue down a single button from his clothes. I have often wanted
him to throw off his great flaxen wig, and where he was bald, to
plaster it over, like my Lord Pately, with powder.

HASTINGS. You are right, madam; for, as among the ladies there are
none ugly, so among the men there are none old.

MRS. HARDCASTLE. But what do you think his answer was? Why, with his
usual Gothic vivacity, he said I only wanted him to throw off his wig,
to convert it into a tete for my own wearing.

HASTINGS. Intolerable! At your age you may wear what you please, and
it must become you.

MRS. HARDCASTLE. Pray, Mr. Hastings, what do you take to be the most
fashionable age about town?

HASTINGS. Some time ago, forty was all the mode; but I'm told the
ladies intend to bring up fifty for the ensuing winter.

MRS. HARDCASTLE. Seriously. Then I shall be too young for the
fashion.

HASTINGS. No lady begins now to put on jewels till she's past forty.
For instance, Miss there, in a polite circle, would be considered as a
child, as a mere maker of samplers.

MRS. HARDCASTLE. And yet Mrs. Niece thinks herself as much a woman,
and is as fond of jewels, as the oldest of us all.

HASTINGS. Your niece, is she? And that young gentleman, a brother of
yours, I should presume?

MRS. HARDCASTLE. My son, sir. They are contracted to each other.
Observe their little sports. They fall in and out ten times a day, as
if they were man and wife already. (To them.) Well, Tony, child, what
soft things are you saying to your cousin Constance this evening?

TONY. I have been saying no soft things; but that it's very hard to be
followed about