"Shut up to you!"
And I heard the fellow telling his comrades my strange companion with the
tangled hair was a pirate from the Barbary States. Another saucy vender
caught at the chance.
"Perukes! Perukes! Newest French periwigs!" he shouts, jangling his
bell and putting himself across M. Radisson's course. "You'd please to
lack a periwig, sir! Walk this way! Walk this way--"
"Out of my way!" orders Radisson with a hiss of his rapier round the
fellow's fat calves. "'Tis a milliner's doll the town makes of a man!
Out of my way!"
And the 'prentice went skipping. We were to meet the directors of the
Hudson's Bay Company that night, and we had come out to refurbish our
scant, wild attire. But bare had we turned the corner for the
linen-draper's shops of Fleet Street when M. Radisson's troubles began.
Idlers eyed us with strange looks. Hucksters read our necessitous state
and ran at heel shouting their wares. Shopmen saw needy customers in us
and sent their 'prentices running. Chairmen splashed us as they passed;
and impudent dandies powdered and patched and laced and bewigged like any
fizgig of a girl would have elbowed us from the wall to the gutter for
the sport of seeing M. Radisson's moccasins slimed.
"Egad," says M.
Pages:
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254