Matters concluded with the merchant, the Colonel went to take possession of the house, and he installed there two of the four French lackeys the Duke had lent him for myrmidons.
After that there was little to do but wait until Saturday, since, for reasons which the Duke had given him, the attempt should not be made before. That evening, however, and the next, the Colonel repaired to Lincoln’s Inn to watch from a safe distance Miss Farquharson’s departure from the theatre, and so inform himself precisely of her habits in the matter. On both occasions she came forth at the same time--a few minutes after seven, and entered her waiting sedan-chair, in which she was borne away.
On Friday evening Holles went again, at six o’clock, and he had been waiting half an hour before the chair that was to convey her home made its appearance. It was the same chair as before and borne by the same men.
Holles lounged forward to engage them in talk. Of set purpose and despite the warm weather, he had donned a well-worn leather jerkin to cover and conceal his fairly presentable coat. He had removed the feather from his hat, and all minor ornaments, replacing his embroidered baldric by one of plain leather. A pair of old boots completed the studied shabbiness of his appearance, and gave him the air of a down-at-heel ruffler, ready to make a friend of any man.
He slouched towards the chairmen, pulling at a clay pipe, a man with time on his hands. And they, sitting on the shafts of the chair--one on each side, so as to balance each other--were nothing loath to have the tedium of their waiting beguiled by the thrasonical garrulousness his appearance led them to expect.
He did not disappoint them. He talked of the pestilence and of the war, and of the favouritism practised at Court, which bestowed commands upon all manner of incompetent fops and kept a hardened and stout old soldier like himself cooling his heels in London’s plague-ridden streets. In this last respect he made them find him ridiculous, so that they rallied and covertly mocked him and hugely enjoyed themselves at his expense, to all of which it appeared to them that his monstrous ruffler’s vanity made him blind. Finally he invited them to come and drink with him, and they were nothing reluctant to permit him thus to add physical to the mental entertainment he had already afforded them. In their spirit of raillery, and to involve this foolish fellow in the utmost expense, they would have conducted him to The Grange. But the foolish fellow had more reasons than one for preferring an obscure little alehouse at the corner of Portugal Row, and it was thither that he now conducted his newly made friends and guests.