The captain made a very brief pretence of silent hesitation, then accepted the remainder of the feast from the scholar's hands, saying:
"Worshipful sir, it should go hard with me ere I would refuse true hospitality. Have I not seen you about the town before this night?" He sat down beside Holyday, and began to devour the already much-diminished fowl.
"I know not," replied the scholar, who had a mild, untroubled way of speaking. "'Twas last Michaelmas I came to London. I have kept some riotous company, but, if I have met you, I remember not."
"'Slight! you know then who I be?"
"Not I, truly."
"Yet you call me riotous."
"That argues no previous knowledge. Though I be a Cambridge man, it takes none of my scholarship to know a gentleman of brawls at sight, a roaring boy, a swaggerer of the taverns—"
"Why, boy, why! Do you mean offence in these names?"
"No offence in the world. You see I bear no sword, being but a poor master of arts. None so bold of speech as the helpless, among honourable men of the sword."