"Out of my way!" orders Radisson with a hiss of his rapier round the fellow's fat calves. "'Tis a milliner's doll the town makes of a man! Out of my way!"
And the 'prentice went skipping. We were to meet the directors of the Hudson's Bay Company that night, and we had come out to refurbish our scant, wild attire. But bare had we turned the corner for the linen-draper's shops of Fleet Street when M. Radisson's troubles began. Idlers eyed us with strange looks. Hucksters read our necessitous state and ran at heel shouting their wares. Shopmen saw needy customers in us and sent their 'prentices running. Chairmen splashed us as they passed; and impudent dandies powdered and patched and laced and bewigged like any fizgig of a girl would have elbowed us from the wall to the gutter for the sport of seeing M. Radisson's moccasins slimed.
"Egad," says M. Radisson, "an I spill not some sawdust out o' these dolls, or cut their stay-strings, may the gutter take us for good and all! Pardieu! An your wig's the latest fashion, the wits under 't don't matter—"
"Have a care, sir," I warned, "here comes a fellow!"
'Twas a dandy in pink of fashion with a three-cornered hat coming over his face like a waterspout, red-cheeked from carminative and with the high look in his eyes of one who saw common folk from the top of church steeple. His lips were parted enough to show his teeth; and I warrant you my fine spark had posed an hour at the looking-glass ere he got his neck at the angle that brought out the swell of his chest. He was dressed in red plush with silk hose of the same colour and a square-cut, tailed coat out of whose pockets stuck a roll of paper missives.
"Verse ready writ by some penny-a-liner for any wench with cheap smiles," says M. Radisson aloud.
But the fellow came on like a strutting peacock with his head in air. Behind followed his page with cloak and rapier. In one hand our dandy carried his white gloves, in the other a lace gewgaw heavy with musk, which he fluttered in the face of every shopkeeper's daughter.
"Give the wall! Give the wall!" cries the page. "Give the wall to Lieutenant Blood o' the Tower!"
"S'blood," says M. Radisson insolently, "let us send that snipe sprawling!"
At that was a mighty awakening on the part of my fine gentleman.