"SECOND LADY. Impudent flirt, to be found out!

"THIRD LADY. But I speak it only to you.

"FOURTH LADY. [_Whispers next woman_.] Nor I, but to no one.

"FIFTH LADY. [_Whispers the_ WIDOW.] I can't believe it; nay, I always
thought it, madam.

"WIDOW. Sure, 'tis impossible the demure, prim thing. Sure all the
world is hypocrisy Well, I thank my stars, whatsoever sufferings I
have, I have none in reputation. I wonder at the men; I could never
think her handsome. She has really a good shape and complexion but no
mein; and no woman has the use of her beauty without mein. Her charms
are dumb, they want utterance. But whither does distraction lead me to
talk of charms?

"FIRST LADY. Charms, a chit's, a girl's charms! Come, let us widows be
true to ourselves, keep our countenances and our characters, and a fig
for the maids.

"SECOND LADY. Ay, since they will set up for our knowledge, why should
not we for their ignorance?

"THIRD LADY. But, madam, o' Sunday morning at church, I curtsied to
you and looked at a great fuss in a glaring light dress, next pew.
That strong, masculine thing is a knight's wife, pretends to all the
tenderness in the world, and would fain put the unwieldly upon us for
the soft, the languid. She has of a sudden left her dairy, and sets up
for a fine town lady; calls her maid Cisly, her woman speaks to her by
her surname of Mrs. Cherryfist, and her great foot-boy of nineteen,
big enough for a trooper, is stripped into a laced coat, now Mr. Page
forsooth.

"FOURTH LADY. Oh, I have seen her. Well, I heartily pity some people
for their wealth; they might have been unknown else--you would die,
madam, to see her and her equipage: I thought her horses were ashamed
of their finery; they dragged on, as if they were all at plough, and
a great bashful-look'd booby behind grasp'd the coach, as if he had
never held one.

"FIFTH LADY. Alas! some people think there is nothing but being fine
to be genteel; but the high prance of the horses, and the brisk
insolence of the servants in an equipage of quality are inimitable.

"FIRST LADY. Now you talk of an equipage, I envy this lady the beauty
she will appear in a mourning coach, it will so become her complexion;
I confess I myself mourned for two years for no other reason. Take up
that hood there. Oh, that fair face with a veil! [_They take up her
hood_.

"WIDOW. Fie, fie, ladies. But I have been told, indeed, black does
become--

"SECOND LADY. Well,