“We won’t jest about my wife, Madam, if it please you. After all, she’s my wife and I respect the position if I don’t respect her. Hallo—who comes here? Mr. Gay, your servant!”
For the door opened and Mr. Gay the ever-welcome, appeared unannounced, bowing low to her Grace and her companion. She flung her tambour frame aside and sprang lightly to her feet.
“Hallo also! How goes it Gay? Gayly? Do they speak the lines with point, with malice? Are the pretty chickabiddies all learning to flutter about their Macheath? Why this anxious brow, man?”
“Because, Madam, I’m harassed about Polly.”
“Not bolted—not flown? Trust a prude!” cries the Duchess.
“Nothing less, your Grace. But she was lodging with Scawen, Rich’s old factotum that does all his odd jobs and’s a kind of remembrancer to him. Well—the poor old trot has catcht the small-pox, God knows how, and poor Polly is homeless and Rich distraught. She can’t go home, for her mother’s husband would fain use her for a pretty decoy-duck in his coffee house (which between ourselves deserves a worse name), and Rich knows of no decent lodging for her high or low. You are aware, Madam, that his acquaintance is not the most straight-laced. ’Tis a droll quandary, but troublesome. The girl is so pretty she needs a guardian.”
“Lord save us!” says the Duke. “Won’t your own character constitute you a duenna, Mr. Gay? I don’t imagine either a tongue or a sword would wag if you safeguarded the lady’s morals. But is she in truth such a Dian?”
“I beg you won’t jest, your Grace!” cries Mr. Gay, pushing his peruke off his brow in his perplexity. “I am aware that a young woman’s virtue is a subject for mockery to all the fops in town, but, notwithstanding, this untoward circumstance may put an end to our hopes. The girl knows not where to go nor what to do. She sits in tears, and her mother declares she shall go to an aunt in Sussex tomorrow, for she don’t give a fig for the play. Would sooner the girl didn’t play at all!”
“Lord save us!” says the Duchess. “But isn’t there any among the player-women can give her house-room?”
“Why, Madam, Mrs. Bishop—Well, not to be indelicate, we all know Mrs. Bishop is not the duenna one should choose for a virgin, and the rest—well, there’s objections to them all.”