unconsciously severe, and his broad brow was cumbered with much thought and care. He inclined decidedly to join in the discussions of his elderly confederates — worthy Master Guy, who was so economic that he ate his dinner from a pot-house upon a newspaper on his counter, and yet so munificent that he endowed the two great hospitals; a strong man loving all liberty, and at the same time, most tenderly charitable, who formed a broad contrast to another bookseller — crafty Jacob Tonson — who “aggravated’ the nose of Dryden’s Æneas to suit Tonson’s King William, and whom the poet brought to order and branded indelibly:
With leering looks, bull-faced, and freckled fair,
With two left legs, and Judas-coloured hair.
The young man did not care to be waylaid, and drawn aside by the juvenile promenaders, and he went at last absently and unwillingly along with a company which contained matrons and maids, one of whose members called upon him to help to form an escort; for it was not altogether safe for a flock of women, unless well guarded, to traverse these cool alleys in the twilight. The leader of these enterprising fair ones was an ac- quaintance of this austere young Harris, actually in the trade herself, — none less than Mrs. Lucy Soule, both a printer and stationer, on her father’s old foundation, and marvel of marvels in that age of illiterate and frivolous women, in addition, a good 'compositor.' Being able to display such transcendent talents, there was no great objection to Mistress Lucy’s being affected, and as she was a woman — and a very delicate woman, too — her conceit took a languishing, die-away form. But as Mrs. Lucy refused many offers, not from love of power, but ‘that her aged mother might have the chief command in her house,’ Mrs. Lucy unquestionably deserved to be cited as a good soul, — a pious, affectionate soul to whom, as rumour whispered, dark, blunt Thomas Guy had inclined, only his shyness matched with his magnanimity, and what might have been the brave, honest man ’8 bliss, was but his secret sadness. Yet, mourn not for him, because such sadness must have had its sweetness also.
Mrs. Lucy, in her blue roquelary, with her cambric hood, meeting and forming part of her tippet, like a very dainty sister of charity’s cap and collar, and infinitely becoming to her soft features and sunny complexion, albeit they were past their prime, would have had Harris walk by her side and listen to her.
“Sir, this is a most heavenly night. The evening-star doth come out finely. I confess I affect the evening-star, notwithstanding I ne’er listened to a lover’s vow; in truth, I never did, sir, when I could help it; but I don’t object to my friends calling me Stella — a most divine name, though I don’t pretend to be divine, only I’m prodigiously fond of the first star, as some chatterers will tell you.” But when she found that he was restless, and did not care to press her on her tastes, and hold gallant, witty converse on her widely-blown cruelty, like a mild, innocent, foolish woman as she was, she just winced for a moment, and then forgave the slight — never dreamt of revenge, unless that when she looked around and planned to promote another man to her right-hand, she trans- ferred Harris, by a recommendation which he could not scorn, to walk with and have a care of one of the prettiest of her maidens to whom Mrs. Lucy liked to act as a youthful mother; for Mrs. Lucy was too fortunate a woman — too much envied in her substance and state — to feel ashamed of her forty summers.
This revenge most young men would have considered a slight punishment.
The damsel was Mistress Patience Chiswell, one of the daughters of Mr. Chiswell, the carver and gilder, in Lombard Street. Master Harris really did not know very well how to begin to amuse Mrs. Patience, though he was by no means stupid; so, in place of unfolding his parts in paying her the compliments of the day, and courting her smiles, he kept glancing aside at her as she tripped by his side, and by dint of noticing her much more than he would have otherwise done, or than he had found time and inclination to do to other young women, he began to wonder, Puritan as he was, what deep feelings filled the heart, or high principles swayed the spirit of this bright, fragile piece of humanity.
Mrs. Patience was very young, fresh and fearless, and a little loquacious withal, as is the way with empty little heads and hearts. Not that Patience was singularly ignorant, shallow, or care- less; but she was one of the many green olive branches round a very busy man’s table, where the elders were well meaning, but commonplace and easy, and the young were very thoughtless and a little selfish, and at the same time as guile- less in their faults and follies as lads and lasses can be in this evil world.
Mrs. Patience looked quite as well as Mrs. Lucy, and yet with a difference; Harris found that out. The child had no peculiar advantage either, that his inexperienced eye could detect, except the loveliest, liveliest bow of a rosy mouth, and a pair of the most strangely sensible grey eyes. Mrs. Patience wore the same modest apparel of a merchant’s daughter, the disencumbered feet, the tuckered throat, the head-dress for a covering: but, granting Mrs. Patience’s crimson and white colours and her patterns were perfectly decorous, she 8 ported a fan, which Master Harris deemed frivolous, and she prattled, which was a far more hopeless and heinous evil. She told him of the difficulty she had found in crossing the Strand and Snow Hill after the last rain, and she asked him if he ever went a junketting to gather the roses for which Holbom was still renowned, though sure they were only to be got in private gardens now. London would soon be too confined for young folks who must have play, and plain folks who had no fine grounds of their own: and then she wandered to the Mall and the king’s ducks, and her father’s maggot, who would not suffer them to go there on account of the wild courtiers, but for her part she was not affrighted. What
could they say to her? They would but take off their hats and laugh, and challenge her, and she would curtsey and run away, and if they gave chase, she was fleet of foot and would soon escape them.