"With all my heart," said Holyday, glad to escape the risk of meeting women.
[CHAPTER VII.]
MISTRESS MILLICENT.
"'Tis a pretty wench, a very pretty wench,—nay, a very, very, very pretty wench."
—The Wise-woman of Hogsdon.
The house of Thomas Etheridge, goldsmith, was near facing the great gilt cross in Cheapside, the images around whose base—especially that of the Virgin—were chronically in a state of more or less defacement. A few doors east of Master Etheridge's, and directly opposite the cross, was the western end of Goldsmith's Row, described by Stow as "the most beautiful frame of fair houses and shops that be within the walls of London, or elsewhere in England." It consisted of "ten fair dwelling-houses and fourteen shops, all in one frame, uniformly built four stories high, beautified toward the street with the Goldsmiths' arms and the likeness of woodmen, ... riding on monstrous beasts, all ... cast in lead, richly painted over and gilt."
Master Etheridge's house, thrusting out an iron arm from which hung a blue-painted square board with a great gilt acorn, was quite as tall and "fair" as any of the ten in the neighbouring "frame." Its upper stories were bright with the many small panes of wide projecting windows. The shop, whose front was usually open to the street by day, occupied the full width, and a good part of the depth, of the ground floor. Behind the shop was a "gallery" or passage, with a private entrance from the side street, and with a stairway; beyond this passage was the kitchen; and over that, the dining-room, which looked down upon a back yard that was really a small garden.
Upon the low plastered ceiling of the dining-room was moulded a curious design of golden acorns. The walls were hung with tapestry representing a chase of deer. The floor was covered with rushes, which crackled under the feet of the boys that waited upon the family at supper.
Captain Ravenshaw, with face clean-shaven all but for the skilfully up-turned moustaches and the tiny lip-tuft, leaned back in his carven chair after a comforting draught of his host's canary, drew his foot away from the dog that was pretending to mistake it for a bone under the table, and thought how lucky were those who supped every day at the board of Thomas Etheridge.