A Rough Diamond. Buckstone John Baldwin

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      SIR W. Exactly! I used to watch her every action as I reclined on my sofa. She was rude and odd, but there was a heartiness in her nature and a comeliness in her person that pleased me, that really fascinated me, till at last I began rather to love her.

      BLEN. You love an uneducated country wench?

      SIR W. It was silly, wasn’t it? but we are not our own masters in such matters. However, don’t laugh at me yet. I anticipated the pleasure of rightly directing her mind, of the happiness in possessing a subject on which to practise my favorite theory – in short, I pictured a whole life of felicity in educating the object of my affection.

      BLEN. For which purpose you married her.

      SIR W. I did, to the great disgust of my connexions; indeed, my uncle, Lord Plato, has never visited me since my union – has never written, or noticed me in any way.

      BLEN. But you found happiness in combining the character of husband and tutor?

      SIR W. I surrounded her with masters – an English master, a French master, a music master, a dancing master, a singing master, a philosophical lecturer, and a political economist.

      BLEN. And what has been her progress?

      SIR W. Her progress has been entirely stationary. I can do nothing with her – she seems to rejoice in her ignorance – and, though I sometimes think she has a capacity for learning, my hopes have been so often disappointed that I now give her up. She’s a female Orson, Sir, though I confess I was once her Valentine.

      – There she is.

      BLEN. Very merry, at any rate.

      SIR W. Oh, she’s merry enough, and good-humoured enough; but, my dear Sir, with my prejudices, with my ideas of refinement, with my delicacy as regards conduct in society, conceive my agony in possessing a wife who is as wild as an unbroken colt, finds a nickname for everybody, and persists in being called by her Christian name of – of —

      BLEN. What?

      SIR W. I’m ashamed to tell you – Margery.

      BLEN. Margery?

      SIR W. I have tried to persuade her to change it to Matilda, or Magaretta, or Marguerite, but all in vain – she says her mother’s name was Margery, her grandmother’s name was Margery, that her name is Margery, and Margery she’ll be to the end of the chapter.

      MARGERY. (without) Now, come along, Jack! and you, Tom, mind how you carry my kitten.

      MAR. Now, Jack, mind what I say – how many pigs is there in the last litter? Oh, I know – eight! Well, you may send one to my cousin Joe – I’ll tell you where he lives by and by – two to my old dad, and one to Betsy Buncle, my old playfellow in Lancashire – the three black ones I shall want to have in the parlor to play with.

      SIR W. Pigs in the parlor to play with? Lady Evergreen, do you not perceive a visitor?

      MAR. Wait a minute – I’ll speak to him presently. Do as I bid you; and you, Tom, give my kitten her lunch, and turn all the young terriers loose on the grass plot, because I like to see ’em tumble over one another – and now go.

      – Well, Sir, and how d’ye do, Sir? and (to BLENHEIM) how are you, and who are you?

      SIR W. My dear, my dear, do think of your station! This is an old friend of mine – we were at college together. Captain Blenheim – Lady Evergreen.

      MAR. (dropping a country curtsey) Hope you’re well, Sir – fine weather for the hay, and nothing can look better as yet than the taters.

      SIR W. Hush, hush! don’t talk, my dear.

      MAR. Then what did you bring him here for?

      BLEN. I am delighted in being introduced to the wife of my old friend.

      MAR. Well, I ain’t sorry to see you, if it comes to that, if only for a bit of a change, for my Billy here seldom lets anybody come a-visiting, and when I ask him why he don’t have a few friends now and then to kick up a bit of a bobbery —