MRS. FAIN. Immediately; I have a word or two for Mr. Witwoud.
SCENE VI.
Mrs. Millamant, Mirabell, Mincing.
MIRA. I would beg a little private audience too. You had the tyranny to deny me last night, though you knew I came to impart a secret to you that concerned my love.
MILLA. You saw I was engaged.
MIRA. Unkind! You had the leisure to entertain a herd of fools: things who visit you from their excessive idleness, bestowing on your easiness that time which is the incumbrance of their lives. How can you find delight in such society? It is impossible they should admire you; they are not capable; or, if they were, it should be to you as a mortification: for, sure, to please a fool is some degree of folly.
MILLA. I please myself.—Besides, sometimes to converse with fools is for my health.
MIRA. Your health! Is there a worse disease than the conversation of fools?
MILLA. Yes, the vapours; fools are physic for it, next to assafoetida.
MIRA. You are not in a course of fools?