Grey. Your ideal must have been of marvellous beauty, to admit such a comparison,—and your preference most intelligently based, to be swept away by it!
Tomes. Come, Grey, be fair. You know that merit has no immunity from ridicule.
Grey. True; but no less true that ridicule does no real harm to merit. If this Mrs. Robinson Crusoe's gown had been truly beautiful, my ridiculous comparison could not have so entirely disenchanted my wife with it;—she, mind you, being supposed (for the sake of our argument only) to be a woman of sense and taste.
Mrs. Grey. Accept my profoundest and most grateful curtsy,—on credit. It's too much trouble to rise and make it; and, to confess the truth, I can't; my foot has caught in my hoop. Help me, Laura.
[Disentanglement,—from which the gentlemen avert modest eyes, laughing the while.]
Grey. I do assure you, Nelly, that, until you leave off that monstrosity of steel and cordage, your sense and taste, so far as costume is concerned, must be taken on credit, as well as your curtsies.
Mrs. Grey. Leave off my hoop? Would you have me look like a fright?—as slinky as if I had been drawn through a key-hole?
Miss Larches. Leave off her hoop?
Mr. Key. Be seen without a hoop? Why, what a guy a woman would look without a hoop! I suppose they do take them off at certain times, but then they are not visible to the naked eye.
Tomes. Yes, Grey,—why take off her hoop? I don't care, you know, to have hoops worn. But worn or not worn, what difference does it make?