Pleas. Pray stay a little; I'll not leave you thus.
Wood. I know it; and therefore mean to leave you first.
Pleas. O, I find it now! you are going to set up 079 your bills, like a love-mountebank, for the speedy cure of distressed widows, old ladies, and languishing maids in the green-sickness: a sovereign remedy.
Wood. That last, for maids, would be thrown away: Few of your age are qualified for the medicine. What the devil would you be at, madam?
Pleas. I am in the humour of giving you good counsel. The wife can afford you but the leavings of a fop; and to a witty man, as you think yourself, that is nauseous: The mistress has fed upon a fool so long, she is carrion too, and common into the bargain. Would you beat a ground for game in the afternoon, when my lord mayor's pack had been before you in the morning?
Wood. I had rather sit five hours at one of his greasy feasts, then hear you talk.
Pleas. Your two mistresses keep both shop and warehouse; and what they cannot put off in gross, to the keeper and the husband, they sell by retail to the next chance-customer. Come, are you edified?
Wood. I am considering how to thank you for your homily; and, to make a sober application of it, you may have some laudable design yourself in this advice.
Pleas. Meaning, some secret inclination to that amiable person of yours?
Wood. I confess, I am vain enough to hope it; for why should you remove the two dishes, but to make me fall more hungrily on the third?