Page:The Story of Nell Gwyn.djvu/39

Rh He was fond of music, could prick down a few notes for himself, and when his portrait was painted by Hales, was drawn holding in his hand the music which he had composed for a favourite passage in the Siege of Rhodes. He was known to many of the players, and often asked them to dinner,—now and then not much to the satisfaction, as he tells us, of his wife. Mrs. Knep, of the King's House, and Joseph Harris of the Duke's (to both of whom I have already introduced the reader) were two of his especial favourites. The gossip and scandal of the green-room of Drury Lane and Lincoln's-Inn-Fields were in this way known to him, and what he failed to obtain behind the scenes he would learn from the orange-women at both houses. Nell was in her sixteenth, and Mr. Pepys in his thirty-fourth year, when, on Monday, the 3rd of