to keep ye free and
give ye laughter every hour? Buy my parrot, lady. Just from the Gold
Coast. He'll talk ye Spanish, Flemish or good city tongue. Buy my parrot
at ten crowns, and so cheap, lady!" So spoke the ear-ringed sailor, who
might never have seen a salter water than the Thames.

"Powder-puffs for the face, lady," whispered a lean and weazen-faced
hawker, slipping among the crowd with secrecy. "See my puff, made from
the foot of English hares. Rubs out all wrinkles, lady, and keeps ye
young as when ye were a lass. But a shilling, a shilling. See!" And with
the pretense of secrecy the seller would sidle up to a carriage of some
dame, slip to her the hare's foot and take the shilling with an air as
though no one could see what none could fail to notice.

Above these mingled cries of the hangers-on of this crowd of nobility
and gentles rose the blare of crude music, and cries far off and
confused. Above it all shone the May sun, brighter here than lower
toward the Thames. In the edge of London town it was, all this little
pageant, and from the residence squares below and far to the westward
came the carriages and the riders, gathering at the spot which for the
hour was the designated rendezvous of capricious fashion. No matter if
the tower at the drinking curb was crowded, so that inmates of the
coaches could not find way among the others. There was at least magic in
the morning, even if one might not drink at the chalybeate spring.
Cheeks did indeed grow rosy, and eyes brightened under the challenge not
only of the dawn but of the ardent eyes that gazed impertinently bold or
reproachfully imploring.

Far-reaching was the line of the gentility, to whose flanks clung the
rabble of trade. Back upon the white road came yet other carriages,
saluted by those departing. Low hedges of English green reached out into
the distance, blending ultimately at the edge of the pleasant sky. Merry
enough it was, and gladsome, this spring day; for be sure the really ill
did not brave the long morning ride to test the virtue of the waters of
Sadler's Wells. It was for the most part the young, the lively, the
full-blooded, perhaps the wearied, but none the less the vital and
stirring natures which met in the decreed assemblage.

Back of Sadler's little court the country came creeping close up to the
town. There were fields not so far away on these long highways.
Wandering and rambling roads ran off to the westward and to the north,