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.

A mighty personage with fat chops and ruddy cheeks and rounded waistcoat
and padded calves received us at the door of Sir John Kirke's house in
Drury Lane. Sir John was not yet back from the Exchange, this grand
fellow loftily informed us at the entrance to the house. A glance told
him that we had neither page-boy nor private carriage; and he half-shut
the door in our faces.

"Now the devil take _this thing_ for a half-baked, back-stairs,
second-hand kitchen gentleman," hissed M. Radisson, pushing in. "Here,
my fine fellow," says he with a largesse of vails his purse could ill
afford, "here, you sauce-pans, go tell Madame Radisson her husband is
here!"

I have always held that the vulgar like insolence nigh as well as silver;
and Sieur Radisson's air sent the feet of the kitchen steward pattering.
"Confound him!" muttered Radisson, as we both went stumbling over
footstools into the dark of Sir John's great drawing-room, "Confound him!
An a man treats a man as a man in these stuffed match-boxes o' towns,
looking man as a man on the level square in the eye, he only gets himself
slapped in the face for it! An there's to be any slapping in the face,
be the first to do it, boy! A man's a man by the measure of his stature
in the wilderness. Here, 'tis by the measure of his clothes----"

But a great rustling of flounced petticoats down the hallway broke in on
his speech, and a little lady had jumped at me with a cry of "Pierre,
Pierre!" when M. Radisson's long arms caught her from her feet.

"You don't even remember what your own husband looked like," said he.
"Ah, Mary, Mary--don't dear me! I'm only dear when the court takes me
up! But, egad," says he, setting her down on her feet, "you may wager
these pretty ringlets of yours,