“Hold your peace, sir,” answered the Knight of the Coif, who was disturbed by Vin's address whilst in deep consultation with an eminent attorney; “hold your peace! You are the loudest-tongued varlet betwixt the Devil's Tavern and Guildhall.”
“A watch,” reiterated the undaunted Jenkin, “that shall not lose thirteen minutes in a thirteen years' lawsuit.—He's out of hearing—A watch with four wheels and a bar-movement—a watch that shall tell you, Master Poet, how long the patience of the audience will endure your next piece at the Black Bull.” The bard laughed, and fumbled in the pocket of his slops till he chased into a corner, and fairly caught, a small piece of coin.
“Here is a tester to cherish thy wit, good boy,” he said.
“Gramercy,” said Vin; “at the next play of yours I will bring down a set of roaring boys, that shall make all the critics in the pit, and the gallants on the stage, civil, or else the curtain shall smoke for it.”
“Now, that I call mean,” said Tunstall, “to take the poor rhymer's money, who has so little left behind.”
“You are an owl, once again,” said Vincent; “if he has nothing left to buy cheese and radishes, he will only dine a day the sooner with some patron or some player, for that is his fate five days out of the seven. It is unnatural that a poet should pay for his own pot of beer; I will drink his tester for him, to save him from such shame; and when his third night comes round, he shall have penniworths for his coin, I promise you.—But here comes another-guess customer. Look at that strange fellow—see how he gapes at every shop, as if he would swallow the wares.—O! Saint Dunstan has caught his eye; pray God he swallow not the images. See how he stands astonished, as old Adam and Eve ply their ding-dong! Come, Frank, thou art a scholar; construe me that same fellow, with his blue cap with a cock's feather in it, to show he's of gentle blood, God wot—his grey eyes, his yellow hair, his sword with a ton of iron in the handle—his grey thread-bare cloak—his step like a Frenchman—his look like a Spaniard—a book at his girdle, and a broad dudgeon-dagger on the other side, to show him half-pedant, half-bully. How call you that pageant, Frank?”
“A raw Scotsman,” said Tunstall; “just come up, I suppose, to help the rest of his countrymen to gnaw old England's bones; a palmerworm, I reckon, to devour what the locust has spared.”
“Even so, Frank,” answered Vincent; “just as the poet sings sweetly,—
'In Scotland he was born and bred,
And, though a beggar, must be fed.'”
“Hush!” said Tunstall, “remember our master.”