第16章

So to my tale. There was a great frost when my Lord bade me followhim to the water gate near our lodgings in the Strand. When we reached it we were amazed to see that the Thames was frozen over and many citizens disporting themselves on the ice--the like of which no man had seen before. There were fires built thereon, and many ships and barges were stuck hard and fast, and my Lord thought it vastly pretty that the people were walking under their bows and cabbin windows and climbing of their sides like mermen, but I, being a plain, blunt man, had no joy in such idlenesse, deeming it better that in these times of pith and enterprise they should be more seemly employed. My Lord, because of one or two misadventures by reason of the slipperiness of the ice, was fain to go by London Bridge, which we did; my Lord as suited his humor ruffling the staid citizens as he passed or peering under the hoods of their wives and daughters--as became a young gallant of the time. I, being a plain, blunt man, assisted in no such folly, but contented myself, when they complayned to me, with damning their souls for greasy interfering varlets. For I shall now make no scruple in declaring that my Lord was the most noble Earl of Southampton, being withheld from so saying before through very plainness and bluntness, desiring as a simple yeoman to make no boast of serving a man of so high quality.