ht after? Was not I forc'd to get company at
home? And was it not almost three o'clock in the morning before I
was able to come to myself again? And then the fault is not mended
neither--for next time I shall only have twice the inclination to go:
so that all this mending and mending, you see, is but darning an old
ruffle, to make it worse than it was before.

"Lord T. Well, the manner of women's living, of late, is
insupportable, and one way or other--

"Lady T. It's to be mended, I suppose! Why, so it may, but then, my
dear lord, you must give one time--and when things are at worst, you
know, they may mend themselves! Ha! ha!

"Lord T. Madam, I am not in a humour, now, to trifle.

"Lady T. Why, then, my lord, one word of fair argument--to talk with
you, your own way now--you complain of my late hours, and I of your
early ones--so far we are even, you'll allow--but pray which gives us
the best figure, in the eye of the polite world, my active, spirited
three in the morning, or your dull, drowsy, eleven at night? Now,
I think, one has the air of a woman of quality, and t'other of a
plodding mechanic, that goes to bed betimes, that he may rise early,
to open his shop--faugh!

"LORD T. Fy, fy, madam! is this your way of reasoning? 'Tis time to
wake you then. 'Tis not your ill hours alone that disturb me, but as
often the ill company that occasion those ill hours.

"LADY T. Sure I don't understand you now, my lord; what ill company do
I keep?

"LORD T. Why, at best, women that lose their money, and men that win
it! or, perhaps, men that are voluntary bubbles at one game, in hopes
a lady will give them fair play at another.[A] Then that unavoidable
mixture with known rakes, conceal'd thieves, and sharpers in
embroidery--or what, to me, is still more shocking, that herd of
familiar chattering, crop-ear'd coxcombs, who are so often like
monkeys, there would be no knowing them asunder, but that their tails
hang from their head, and the monkey's grows where it should do.

[Footnote A: Women gambled as passionately as did the men in the early
part of the eighteenth century. Ashton quotes the following from the
"Gaming Lady": "She's a profuse lady, tho' of a miserly temper, whose
covetous disposition is the very cause of her extravagancy; for the
desire of success wheedles her ladyship to play, and the incident
charges and disappointments that attend it make her as expensive to
her husband as his coach and six horses. W