Why, belike you'll cowl him, As that stern prude, your aunt, cowled her poor spouse; Noone Hedwiga at a time's enough, My son shall die no monk.

There is an impressive sketch of the elderly prude: "wise, austere, and nice, Who showed her virtue by her scorn of vice"; and another of the selfish and worldly life of the Lady at the Great House who prefers to spend her fortune in London, and leaves her tenants to the tender mercies of her steward.

33 The ghostly prudes, with hagged face, Already had condemn'd the sinner: My Lady rose, and with a grace She smiled, and bid him come to dinner, 34 'Jesu-Maria!

She was a Girl of such exuberant Mirth, that her Visit to Trophonius only reduced her to a more than ordinary Decency of Behaviour, and made a very pretty Prude of her.

The audience must indeed have been qualmish prudes.

When her majesty hunted in the park she was met by Diana, who, pronouncing our royal prude to be the brightest paragon of unspotted chastity, invited her to groves free from the intrusions of Acteon."

Then, though there were all kinds of girls in the class, merry, sentimental, practical, coquettish, prudes, there was no kind, he felt, whose heart he could not touch.

She was called a silly prude and discharged.

For while she makes her silk-worms beds With all the tender things I swear, Whilst all the house my passion reads In papers round her baby's hair, She may receive and own my flame; For though the strictest prudes should know it, She'll pass for a most virtuous dame, And I for an unhappy poet.

Mrs. Behn suffered enough at the hands of supercilious prudes, who had the barbarity to construe her sprightliness into lewdness; and because she had wit and beauty, she must likewise be charged with prostitution and irreligion.

CHAPTER IV: AN 'INGLORIOUS MILTON' Argemone, sweet prude, thought herself bound to read Honoria a lecture that night, on her reckless exhibition of feeling; but it profited little.

Finances are not flourishing, but the crooked manager of the very unbusinesslike bank that is financing the P. and P. Film Co. harbours designs on the virtue of Rita, who has this commodity in a measure unusual with film vampires (or usual, I forget which), and is just a slightly adventurous prude out for a good time.

I was, of course, exceedingly annoyed to have been supposed capable of such a vulgar unmeaning piece of disrespect, and kept my feet as coyly under my petticoats as the veriest prude in the country till I should make my escape.'