"Ere I leave London, I'll see her safe from the old man's hopes and the young man's devices. I'll pawn my brains, else!"
[CHAPTER X.]
IN THE GOLDSMITH'S GARDEN.
"Rather than be yoked with this bridegroom is appointed me I would take up any husband almost upon any trust."—Bartholomew Fair.
Ravenshaw found Master Holyday leaning back against a door-post, with the unconscious weariness of hunger, and listening with a mild interest to the oration of a quack doctor who had drawn a small crowd.
"Come, heart," cried the captain, "the mountebank will never cure thy empty stomach; here's the remedy for that," and he showed his gold piece, and dragged the scholar to an ordinary. After dinner, they bought paper, ink, and pens, and took a lodging at the house of a horse-courser in Smithfield,—a top-story room, with an open view of the horse markets backed by gabled buildings and the tower of St. Bartholomew's Church.
Ravenshaw left the poet at work upon his puppet-play, of which the title was to be: "The Tragical Comical History of Paris and Helen; otherwise the King a Cuckold; being the Sweet Sinful Loves of the Trojan Gallant and the Fair Queen of Menelaus; with the Mad, Merry Humours of the Foul-mouthed Roaring Greek Soldier, Thersites."
The captain whiled away the afternoon in the streets, where there were conjurers, jugglers, morris-dancers, monsters, and all manner of shows for the crowds of people in town for the law term. At evening he took home a supper from a cook's shop, and shared it with Holyday, who, being in the full flow of inspiration, continued writing with one hand while he ate from the other whatever the captain offered him; the poet knowing not what food he took, and oft staring or grimacing as he sought for expression or felt the passion or mirth of what he wrote. Ravenshaw presently placed a lighted candle on the writer's deal table, and stole out to keep his tryst with the goldsmith's daughter.