Only on the instant had I jerked M. Radisson back; and down they came—­dish-water—­and coffee leavings—­and porridge scraps full on the crown of my fine young gentleman, drenching his gay attire as it had been soaked in soapsuds of a week old.  Something burst from his lips a deal stronger than the modish French oaths then in vogue.  There was a shout from the rabble.  I dragged rather than led M. Radisson pell-mell into a shop from front to rear, over a score of garden walls, and out again from rear to front, so that we gave the slip to all those officers now running for the scene of the broil.

“Egad’s life,” cried M. de Radisson, laughing and laughing, “’tis the narrowest escape I’ve ever had!  Pardieu—­to escape the north sea and drown in dish-water!  Lord—­to beat devils and be snuffed out by a wench in petticoats!  ’Tis the martyrdom of heroes!  What a tale for the court!”

And he laughed and laughed again till I must needs call a chair to get him away from onlookers.  In the shop of a draper a thought struck him.

“Egad, lad, that young blade was Blood!”

“So he told you.”

“Did he?  Son of the Blood who stole the crown ten years ago, and got your own Stanhope lands in reward from the king!”

What memories were his words bringing back?—­M.  Picot in the hunting-room telling me of Blood, the freebooter and swordsman.  And that brings me to the real reason for our plundering the linen-drapers’ shops before presenting ourselves at Sir John Kirke’s mansion in Drury Lane, where gentlemen with one eye cocked on the doings of the nobility in the west and the other keen for city trade were wont to live in those days.

For six years M. Radisson had not seen Mistress Mary Kirke—­as his wife styled herself after he broke from the English—­and I had not heard one word of Hortense for nigh as many months.  Say what you will of the dandified dolls who wasted half a day before the looking-glass in the reign of Charles Stuart, there are times when the bravest of men had best look twice in the glass ere he set himself to the task of conquering fair eyes.  We did not drag our linen through a scent bath nor loll all morning in the hands of a man milliner charged with the duty of turning us into showmen’s dummies—­as was the way of young sparks in that age.  But that was how I came to buy yon monstrous wig costing forty guineas and weighing ten pounds and coming half-way to a man’s waist.  And you may set it down to M. Radisson’s credit that he went with his wiry hair flying wild as a lion’s mane.  Nothing I could say would make him exchange his Indian moccasins for the high-heeled pumps with a buckle at the instep.

“I suppose,” he had conceded grudgingly, “we must have a brat to carry swords and cloaks for us, or we’ll be taken for some o’ your cheap-jack hucksters parading latest fashions,” and he bade our host of the Star and Garter have some lad searched out for us by the time we should be coming home from Sir John Kirke’s that night.