Con. Do you call that walking? Pray
What makes you twist your body so, and take
Such pains to turn your toes out? If you’d walk,
Walk thus! Walk like a man, as I do now!
[Walking]
Is yours the way a gentleman should walk?
You neither walk like man nor gentleman!
I’ll show you how you walk. [Mimicking him.]
Do you call that walking?
Wild. My thanks, for a drill-sergeant twice a day
For her sake! [Aside.]
Con. Now, of all things in the world,
What made you dance last night?
Wild. What made me dance?
Con. Right! It was anything but dancing! Steps
That never came from dancing-school—nor English,
Nor Scotch, nor Irish! You must try to cut,
And how you did it! [Cuts.] That’s the way to cut!
And then your chassé! Thus you went, and thus.
[Mimicking him.]
As though you had been playing at hop, step,
And jump!—and yet you looked so monstrous pleased,
And played the simpleton with such a grace,
Taking their tittering for compliment!
I could have boxed you soundly for’t. Ten times
Denied I that I knew you.
Wild. Twenty guineas
Were better in the gutter thrown than gone
To fee a dancing-master! [Aside.]