Mrs. Sul. Any where to pray; for Heaven alone can help me: but I think, Dorinda, there's no form of prayer in the Liturgy against bad husbands.
Dor. But there's a form of law at Doctors' Commons; and I swear, sister Sullen, rather than see you thus continually discontented, I would advise you to apply to that: for besides the part that I bear in your vexatious broils, as being sister to the husband, and friend to the wife, your examples give me such an impression of matrimony, that I shall be apt to condemn my person to a long vacation all its life—But supposing, madam, that you brought it to a case of separation, what can you urge against your husband? my brother is, first, the most constant man alive.
Mrs. Sul. The most constant husband, I grant ye.
Dor. He never sleeps from you.
Mrs. Sul. No, he always sleeps with me.
Dor. He allows you a maintenance suitable to your quality.
Mrs. Sul. A maintenance! do you take me, madam, for an hospital child, that I must sit down and bless my benefactors, for meat, drink, and clothes? As I take it, madam, I brought your brother ten thousand pounds, out of which I might expect some pretty things, called pleasures.
Dor. You share in all the pleasures that the country affords.
Mrs. Sul. Country pleasures! racks and torments! dost think, child, that my limbs were made for leaping of ditches, and clambering over stiles; or that my parents, wisely foreseeing my future happiness in country pleasures, had early instructed me in the rural accomplishments of drinking fat ale, playing at whist, and smoaking tobacco with my husband; and stilling rosemary water, with the good old gentlewoman my mother-in-law?
Dor. I'm sorry, madam, that it is not more in our power to divert you; I could wish, indeed, that our entertainments were a little more polite, or your taste a little less refined; but pray, madam, how came the poets and philosophers, that laboured so much in hunting after pleasure, to place it at last in a country life?