“It is this. The Duke of Sussex is at Sayes Court now, and many more who have left London with him. You are to attend there a masque with the remainder of the Earl’s actors.”
“Well,” interrupted the other, impatiently.
“But I am not here to tell you that alone. When I last saw you, you were at the Golden Hind, Dodsman’s tavern, in Deptford. They called me Tabbard there, and so did you when I waited upon you, and you gave me an angel for my attendance.”
“I do not remember the gold. When I give gold my memory is gone as well,” said the other, while an expressive smile played upon his lips.
“Well,” again began Tabbard, hurriedly, “at the same time that you were there, a gentleman named Manuel Crossford, from Canterbury, was there also with his daughter.”
“Yes, yes,” the man addressed as Kit exclaimed, and with it all the reserve that he had maintained vanished.
“Let details go,” he continued, grasping Tabbard’s arm, “I remember it all and you too. What of her?”
“The father did not look favorably upon your suit.”
“You evidently learned more than was proper for one in your position,” again interrupted the other, “but you are certainly not here to badger words with me. What else have you to say?”
The two men had moved close to one end of the brick wall, so as to avoid being brushed against by the occasional stragglers, who were still issuing from the mist in one direction and vanishing in the other. These stragglers came singly, in pairs, and in groups. Here would ride by a mounted cavalier in Spanish hat, loose velvet cloak that covered him to his knees, and high boots rattling with clumsy silver spurs. Then close in the latter’s wake would follow a ragged, sneaking vagrant of the Straits,[4] who having caught a glimpse of the spurs and the gold cord on the rider’s hat, was now intent on dogging him, until upon the latter’s dismounting at some ordinary or ale-house within the city, a groat might be earned by holding the horse. After these, a line of truant apprentices would stagger by with locked arms and swaying black-capped heads, endeavoring, by blocking the path, to keep a group of gayly dressed women from hurrying toward the tenements in the Garden Alleys.[5]