Miss P. Now would you rail at me for the disposition I was born with—can I help it, if the gods have made me poetical, as the divine bard says.
Pick. Made you poetical, indeed!—s’blood if you had been born in a street near a college, aye, or even the next door to a day-school, I might not have been so surprised—but d——n it, madam, in the middle of the Minories, what had you to do with poetry and stuff?
Miss P. Provoking ignorance.
Pick. Have you not rendered yourself the sneer of all your acquaintance, by your refined poetical intercourse with Mr. Tagg, the author, a fellow that stroles about the country, spouting and acting in every barn he comes to—was he not once found concealed in your closet, to the utter scandal of my house, and the ruin of your reputation!
Miss P. If you had the smallest spark of taste, you would admire the effusions of Mr. Tagg’s pen, and be enchanted at his admirable acting as much as I am.
Pick. Do you tell me I can’t educate my own child, and make a lord chancellor, or an archbishop of Canterbury of him, which ever I like—just as I please.
[Young Pickle by a string draws the chair, Old Pickle falls.
Miss P. How’s this—I’ll lay my life that is another trick of this little mischievous wretch.
Pick. (getting up.) An ungrateful little rascal, to serve me such a trick, just as I had made an archbishop of him—but he can’t be far off—I’ll immediately correct him; here, Thomas. (going, meets Thomas and servants bringing in covers for dinner.) But odso, here’s dinner—well, I’ll defer my severity till that’s over—but if I don’t make him remember this trick one while, say my name is not Pickle. (sits down to table, Pickle cutting up a pheasant.) Sister, this is the first pheasant we have had this season, it looks well—shall I help you—they say anger makes a man dry, but mine has made me hungry—come, here’s a wing for you, and some of the breast.
Enter Susan, (a Cook Maid) in haste.