SCENE II.

_An Apartment._

MELINDA _and_ SYLVIA _meeting_.

_Mel._ Welcome to town, cousin Sylvia. [_Salute._] I envied you your retreat in the country; for Shrewsbury, methinks, and all your heads of shires, are the most irregular places for living: here we have smoke, scandal, affectation, and pretension; in short, every thing to give the spleen--and nothing to divert it--then the air is intolerable.

_Syl._ Oh, madam! I have heard the town commended for its air.

_Mel._ But you don't consider, Sylvia, how long I have lived in it; for I can assure you that to a lady the least nice in her constitution--no air can be good above half a year. Change of air I take to be the most agreeable of any variety in life.

_Syl._ As you say, cousin Melinda, there are several sorts of airs.

_Mel._ Psha! I talk only of the air we breathe, or more properly of that we taste--Have not you, Sylvia, found a vast difference in the taste of airs?

_Syl._ Pray, cousin, are not vapours a sort of air? Taste air! you might as well tell me I may feed upon air! but pr'ythee, my dear Melinda! don't put on such an air to me. Your education and mine were just the same, and I remember the time when we never troubled our heads about air, but when the sharp air from the Welsh mountains made our fingers ache in a cold morning, at the boarding-school.

_Mel._ Our education, cousin, was the same, but our temperaments had nothing alike; you have the constitution of an horse.

_Syl._ So far as to be troubled neither with spleen, cholic, nor vapours. I need no salts for my stomach, no hartshorn for my head, nor wash for my complexion; I can gallop all the morning after the hunting-horn, and all the evening after a fiddle. In short, I can do every thing with my father, but drink and shoot flying; and I am sure I can do every thing my mother could, were I put to the trial.

_Mel._ You are in a fair way of being put to't, for I am told your captain is come to town.

_Syl._ Ay, Melinda, he is come, and I'll take care he shan't go without a companion.

_Mel._ You are certainly mad, cousin!

_Syl._ "And there's a pleasure in being mad, Which none but madmen know."

_Mel._ Thou poor romantic Quixote!--hast thou the vanity to imagine that a young sprightly officer, that rambles o'er half the globe in half a year, can confine his thoughts to the little daughter of a country justice, in an obscure part of the world?

_Syl._ Psha! what care I for his thoughts; I should not like a man with confined thoughts; it shows a narrowness of soul. In short, Melinda, I think a petticoat a mighty simple thing, and I am heartily tired of my sex.

_Mel._ That is, you are tired of an appendix to our sex, that you can't so handsomely get rid of in petticoats as if you were in breeches.--O'my conscience, Sylvia, hadst thou been a man, thou hadst been the greatest rake in Christendom.

_Syl._ I should have endeavoured to know the world, which a man can never do thoroughly without half a hundred friendships, and as many amours. But now I think on't, how stands your affair with Mr. Worthy?

_Mel._ He's my aversion.

_Syl._ Vapours!

_Mel._ What do you say, madam?

_Syl._ I say, that you should not use that honest fellow so inhumanly: he's a gentleman of parts and fortune, and besides that, he's my Plume's friend; and by all that's sacred, if you don't use him better, I shall expect satisfaction.

_Mel._ Satisfaction! you begin to fancy yourself in breeches in good earnest--But, to be plain with you, I like Worthy the worse for being so intimate with your captain; for I take him to be a loose, idle, unmannerly coxcomb.

_Syl._ Oh, Madam! you never saw him, perhaps, since you were mistress of twenty thousand pounds: you only knew him when you were capitulating with Worthy for a settlement, which perhaps might encourage him to be a little loose and unmannerly with you.

_Mel._ What do you mean, madam?

_Syl._ My meaning needs no interpretation, madam.

_Mel._ Better it had, madam; for methinks you are too plain.

_Syl._ If you mean the plainness of my person, I think your ladyship's as plain as me to the full.

_Mel._ Were I sure of that, I would be glad to take up with a rakehelly officer, as you do.

_Syl._ Again! lookye, madam, you are in your own house.

_Mel._ And if you had kept in yours, I should have excused you.

_Syl._ Don't be troubled, madam; I shan't desire to have my visit returned.

_Mel._ The sooner, therefore, you make an end of this, the better.

_Syl._ I am easily persuaded to follow my inclinations; and so, madam, your humble servant. [_Exit._

_Mel._ Saucy thing!

_Enter_ LUCY.

_Lucy._ What's the matter, madam?

_Mel._ Did not you see the proud nothing, how she swelled upon the arrival of her fellow?

_Lucy._ Her fellow has not been long enough arrived, to occasion any great swelling, madam; I don't believe she has seen him yet.

_Mel._ Nor shan't, if I can help it.--Let me see--I have it; bring me pen and ink--Hold, I'll go write in my closet.

_Lucy._ An answer to this letter, I hope, madam? [_Presents a Letter._

_Mel._ Who sent it?

_Lucy._ Your captain, madam.

_Mel._ He's a fool, and I'm tired of him: send it back unopened.

_Lucy._ The messenger's gone, madam.

_Mel._ Then how should I send an answer? Call him back immediately, while I go write. [_Exeunt._

ACT THE SECOND.