“Walterton! begad!”

“And Overbury, too!”

“How late ye come!”

“We thought ye’d fallen a victim to Noll’s myrmidons!”

It was of a truth a gay and merry company that stood, and moved, chatted and laughed, within the narrow confines of that small second-floor room in the gloomy house in Bath Street.

The walls themselves were dingy and bare, washed down with some grayish color, which had long since been defaced by the grime and dust of London.  Thick curtains of a nondescript hue fell in straight folds before each window, and facing these there was another door—­double paneled—­which apparently led to an inner room.

But the place itself was brilliantly illuminated with many wax candles set in chandeliers.  These stood on the several small tables which were dotted about the room.

These tables—­covered with green baize, and a number of chairs of various shapes and doubtful solidity were the only furniture of the room, but in an arched recess in the wall a plaster figure holding a cornucopia, from whence fell in thick profusion the plaster presentments of the fruits of this earth, stood on an elevated pedestal, which had been draped with crimson velvet.

The goddess of Fortune, with a broken nose and a paucity of fingers, dominated the brilliant assembly, from the height of her crimson throne.  Her head had been crowned with a tall peaked modish beaver hat, from which a purple feather rakishly swept over the goddess’s left ear.  An ardent devotee had deposited a copper coin in her extended, thumbless hand, whilst another had fixed a row of candle stumps at her feet.

There was nothing visible in this brilliantly lighted room of the sober modes to which the eye of late had become so accustomed.  Silken doublets of bright and even garish colors stood out in bold contrast against the gray monotone of the walls and hangings.  Fantastic buttons, tags and laces, gorgeously embroidered cuffs and collars edged with priceless Mechlin or d’Alencon, bunches of ribands at knee and wrists, full periwigs and over-wide boot-hose tops were everywhere to be seen, whilst the clink of swords against the wooden boards and frequent volleys of loudly spoken French oaths, testified to the absence of those Puritanic fashions and customs which had become the general rule even in London.

Some of the company sat in groups round the green-topped tables whereon cards or dice and heaps of gold and smaller coins lay in profusion.  Others stood about watching the games or chatting to one another.  Mostly men they were, some old, some young—­but there were women too, women in showy kirtles, with bare shoulders showing well above the colverteen kerchief and faces wherein every line had been obliterated by plentiful daubs of cosmetics.  They moved about the room from table to table, laughing, talking, making comments on the games as these proceeded.

The men apparently were all intent—­either as actual participants or merely as spectators—­upon a form of amusement which His Highness the Lord Protector had condemned as wanton and contrary to law.