Captain Ravenshaw; Or, The Maid of Cheapside. A Romance of Elizabethan London. Robert Neilson Stephens

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СКАЧАТЬ conversely, a success would warrant his demanding a substantial reward in money. Thus far his only payment, and Master Holyday's likewise, had been in the shape of dinners, suppers, tobacco, and clothes. The two had been compelled, from time to time, to put off payment for their lodgings, and to temporise with their laundress; and now their hostess's face wore a more and more inquiring look each morning as they went out. Ravenshaw had, it was true, obtained a little coin in the card-playing and dicing, by means of which he had illustrated to his pupils the uses of roaring in those pastimes. But this amount, small enough, he decided to lay out in ensuring the desired success of his coxcombs in their first bullying exhibition.

      He therefore made a sudden and secret excursion to the suburbs beyond Newgate. After searching the lower taverns and ale-houses about Holborn and Smithfield, he found, in a cookshop in Pye Corner, a man with whom he forthwith entered into negotiation. This man was a burly, middle-aged fellow, with a broken nose, a scarred cheek, a sullen attitude, and a husky voice. While he talked, he frequently spat in the rushes that covered the floor; and now and again he would finish a remark with the words, added without the least sense, "And that's the hell of it." He wore a dirty leather jerkin over other clothes, and his attire was little better than Ravenshaw's had been before his change of fortune.

      After some talk, Captain Ravenshaw handed over some money to this man, promised a further sum upon the issue of the business, received the bravo's assurance that all should go well, and hastened back alone to meet his companions at the sign of the Windmill.

      It was evening when the party sallied forth, the four coxcombs as keen for riot as ever was a colt for kicking up heels in a field. They would have barred the street against the first comers, or sought a brawl in the first tavern, but that Ravenshaw bade them save their mettle for adversaries worthy of their schooling.

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