The Adventures of Harry Rochester: A Tale of the Days of Marlborough and EugeneStrang, Herbert
General
The Adventures of Harry Rochester: A Tale of the Days of Marlborough and Eugene
Strang, Herbert
Blenheim, Battle of, Blindheim, Bavaria, Germany, 1704 -- Juvenile fiction
Descending to the street again, he passed up Cheapside and through St.
Paul’s Churchyard, down Ludgate Hill and through Ludgate, where he
beheld impaled on stakes a row of hideous heads of traitors, one of
which, Sherebiah told him with indignation, was that of Noll Crum’ell.
Then skirting the Fleet Ditch, once navigable, but now a noisome slimy
sewer, he came into Fleet Street, through Temple Bar to the Strand, and
at length arrived at Charing Cross, where he was nearly overturned by a
hasty chair-man, whose "By your leave!" was not yet familiar to his
ears. At Charing Cross stood a number of boys with boxes before them on
the pavement, and cries of "Clean your shoes!" "London fucus!" "Best
Spanish blacking!" came in eager competing tones. Sherebiah selected
one whose stand was in front of a barber’s shop.
"Here’s the blackguard for ’ee, Master Harry," he said. "He’ll shine
your shoes while barber shaves my stubble. A penny; no more."
When the shoes were polished and the stubble mown, Sherebiah called up a
couple of chairmen who were sitting on their poles near by.
"Do ’ee know my Lord Godolphin’s noble house?" he asked.
"Ay; servant, sir."
"Well then, carry my young master to that very house, and see ’ee don’t
jolt ’n, or drop ’n, or let ’n get splashed. ’Tis under a mile, Master
Harry," he whispered at parting.
Harry would rather have walked. The men took what care they could, but
the press of people was so great that they had to dodge at every few
steps, and their fare gripped the seat to prevent himself from being
knocked against first one side, then the other, of the conveyance. At
the corner of Whitehall, as they turned into Scotland Yard, a passing
dray splashed up a shower of liquid mud, and Harry felt a moist dab upon
his nose. Fortunately the spot was soon removed with his handkerchief;
and when, after crossing by the Charcoal House and through the Wood
Yard, the chairmen at length set him down at the door of Godolphin’s
house, he would have felt no anxiety about his personal appearance, if
he had been sufficiently self-conscious to think about it. He had put
on his best coat, silk stockings, and buckle shoes; at his side he wore
the sword about which he had spoken to Sherebiah. He sprang alertly up
the steps, and looked about him with a keen quick gaze that bespoke a
definite purpose.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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