And her hat, sir, was truly the best fashioned thing that I have seen in these parts, being of tawny taffeta, embroidered with scorpions of Venice gold, and having a border garnished with gold fringe--I promise you, sir, an absolute and all-surpassing device.

Touching her skirts, they were in the old pass-devant fashion." "I did not ask you of her attire, sir," said Tressilian, who had shown some impatience during this conversation, "but of her complexion--the colour of her hair, her features." "Touching her complexion," answered the mercer, "I am not so special certain, but I marked that her fan had an ivory handle, curiously inlaid.

And then again, as to the colour of her hair, why, I can warrant, be its hue what it might, that she wore above it a net of green silk, parcel twisted with gold." "A most mercer-like memory!" said Lambourne.

"The gentleman asks him of the lady's beauty, and he talks of her fine clothes!" "I tell thee," said the mercer, somewhat disconcerted, "I had little time to look at her; for just as I was about to give her the good time of day, and for that purpose had puckered my features with a smile--" "Like those of a jackanape simpering at a chestnut," said Michael Lambourne.
"Up started of a sudden," continued Goldthred, without heeding the interruption, "Tony Foster himself, with a cudgel in his hand--" "And broke thy head across, I hope, for thine impertinence," said his entertainer.
"That were more easily said than done," answered Goldthred indignantly; "no, no--there was no breaking of heads.

It's true, he advanced his cudgel, and spoke of laying on, and asked why I did not keep the public road, and such like; and I would have knocked him over the pate handsomely for his pains, only for the lady's presence, who might have swooned, for what I know." "Now, out upon thee for a faint-spirited slave!" said Lambourne; "what adventurous knight ever thought of the lady's terror, when he went to thwack giant, dragon, or magician, in her presence, and for her deliverance?
But why talk to thee of dragons, who would be driven back by a dragon-fly.