CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.
HOW THE MISERICORDE SAILED FOR ROCHELLE.
My master was very surly with me when I refused to go his errand abroad; yet he had too much need of my service in the business he was engaged on to fall out with me as he would have liked.

And seeing me resolved to abide where I was, he bade me stay and look to the place while he himself saw after the removing of the stuff from Mistress Crane's house to Moulsey.
"As to the type," said he, "we will speak of that again.

But mark me, Humphrey, a 'prentice who is not good enough to do an errand like this is not good enough to be my son-in-law." And he went off in dudgeon, leaving me very lonely and miserable.

And, to tell the truth, at any other season I should have hailed this voyage; and when next day I saw lying near London Bridge the _Misericorde_ herself, and hailing the captain (who was that same shipmate who had steered us into Leith Roads), heard from him that in a week he should sail for France, I wished I could divide myself in two and go half with him and half remain at my post in London.
A day or two later, being evening, I had locked up the printing house and was wandering to take the air towards Smithfield.

I had passed under Temple Bar and was making my way down Fleet Street, when there knocked up against me a great carter fellow, whom, by his gait, I took to be more than half drunk.