_Mrs. Grey [after a brief pause]._ Why, so she did! You good-for-nothing
thing, you've spoiled the prettiest dress I ever saw, for me! It was
quite my ideal; and now I never want to see it again.

_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