JERE. I told you what your visit would come to.
VAL. ’Tis as much as I expected. I did not come to see him, I came to see Angelica: but since she was gone abroad, it was easily turned another way, and at least looked well on my side. What’s here? Mrs. Foresight and Mrs. Frail, they are earnest. I’ll avoid ’em. Come this way, and go and enquire when Angelica will return.
SCENE IX.
Mrs. Foresight and Mrs. Frail.
MRS. FRAIL. What have you to do to watch me? ’S’life I’ll do what I please.
MRS. FORE. You will?
MRS. FRAIL. Yes, marry will I. A great piece of business to go to Covent Garden Square in a hackney coach, and take a turn with one’s friend.
MRS. FORE. Nay, two or three turns, I’ll take my oath.
MRS. FRAIL. Well, what if I took twenty—I warrant if you had been there, it had been only innocent recreation. Lord, where’s the comfort of this life if we can’t have the happiness of conversing where we like?
MRS. FORE. But can’t you converse at home? I own it, I think there’s no happiness like conversing with an agreeable man; I don’t quarrel at that, nor I don’t think but your conversation was very innocent; but the place is public, and to be seen with a man in a hackney coach is scandalous. What if anybody else should have seen you alight, as I did? How can anybody be happy while they’re in perpetual fear of being seen and censured? Besides, it would not only reflect upon you, sister, but me.