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Nor does he know why at this moment the laughter rises loud. For Hamnet cannot see what the others can-the white nose of Clowder, the asthmatic old house-dog, coming inquiringly over his shoulder, her tail wagging inquiry as to the wherefore of the uproar.

But somehow, little Will Shakespeare did not laugh. Instead his cheeks and his ears burned hot for Hamnet. Judith did not laugh either. Judith was ten, and Hamnet's sister, and her black eyes flashed around on them all for laughing, and her cheeks were hot. Judith flung a look at Gammer, too, her own Gammer. And Will's heart warmed to Judith, and he went too when she sprang to help Hamnet.

Hamnet's face was scarlet yet as he fumbled around among the rushes and the greens for the pippins, and this done he retired hastily to his stool. But three-legged stools are uncertain, and he sat him heavily down on the rushes instead.

Whereupon they laughed the louder, the girls and the women too-laughed until the candle flames flickered and flared, and Gammer, choking over her bowl, for cates and cider were being handed round, spilled the drink all down her withered neck and over her gown, wheezing and gasping until her daughter snatched the bowl from her and shook the breath back into her with no gentle hand.

IV

Meanwhile Will plucked Hamnet now blubbering on his stool, by the doublet. But Hamnet, turned sullen, shook him off. Perhaps he did not know that Will and Judith had not laughed. But since Hamnet saw fit to shake him off, Will was glad that just then, with a rush of cold air and a sprinkling of snow upon his short coat, Dad came in. His face was ruddy, and as he glanced laughingly around upon them all, he drew deep breath of the spicy evergreens, so that he filled his doublet and close-throated jerkin to their full.

"Good-even to you, neighbors," says Dad. "An' is it great wonder the boy will run away to hie him here? The rogue kens a good thing equal to his elders. But come, boy; your mother is even now sure you have wandered to the river."

And Dad, with a mighty swing, shoulders Will, steadying him with a palm under both small feet; then pauses at Mistress Snelling's questioning.

"Is it true," she inquires, "that the players are coming?"

Sandy-hued Mistress Sadler stiffens and bridles at the question. The Sadlers, whisper says, are Puritanical, whereas there are those who hold that John Shakespeare and his household, for all they are observant of church matters, have still a Catholic leaning. Fond of genial John Shakespeare as the Sadler household are, they shake their heads over some things, and the players are one of these.

"Is it true they are coming?" repeats Mistress Snelling.

"Ay," says Dad, "an' John Shakespeare the man to be thanked for it. Come Twelfth Day sennight, at the Guild Hall, Mistress Snelling."

"Am I to see them, Dad?" whispers small Will, his head down and an arm tight about his father's neck as they go out the door.

"Ay, you inch," promises Dad, stooping, too, as they go under the lintel beneath the penthouse roof, out into the frosty night. The stars are beginning to twinkle through the dusk, and the frozen path crunches underfoot. On each side, as they go up the street, the yards about the houses stand bare and gaunt with leafless stalks.

"Yes," says Dad. "Ay, boy, you shall see the players from between Dad's knees."

[Illustration: "'Ay, boy, you shall see the players'"]

And like the old familiar stories we put on the shelf, gloating the while over the unproven treasures between the lids of the new, straightway Gammer's tales are forgot. And above the wind, as it whips scurries of snow around the corners, pipes Will's voice as they trudge home. But his pipings, his catechisings, now are concerned with this unknown world summed up in the magic term, "The Players."

V

And Dad was as good as his word. First came Christmastide, with all Master Shakespeare's fellow burgesses to dine and the house agog with preparation. No wonder John Shakespeare had need of money to live up to his estate, for next came the Twelfth Night revels with the mummers and waits to be fed and boxed at the chief bailiff's door. And Mary Shakespeare said never a word, but did her husband's bidding cheerfully, even gayly. She had set herself to go his way with faith in his power to wrest success out of venture, and she was not one to take back her word.

The week following, John Shakespeare carried his little son to see the players.

"And was it not as I said?" Mother asked, when the two returned. "Did not the child fall asleep in the midst of it?"

"Sleep!" laughed Dad, clapping Will, so fine in a little green velvet coat, upon the shoulder. "He sleep! You do not know the boy. His cheeks were like your best winter apples, an' his eyes, bless the rogue, are shining yet. An' trotting homeward at my heels, he has scarce had breath to run for talking of it. 'Tis in the blood, boy; your father before you loves a good play, an' the players, too."

And Will, blowing upon his nails aching with the cold, stands squarely with his small legs apart, and looks up at Father. "An' I shall be a player, too, when I'm a man," says Willy Shakespeare. "I shall be a player and wear a dagger like Herod, an' walk about an' draw it-so--" and struts him up and down while his father laughs and claps hand to knee and roars again, until Mistress Shakespeare tells him he it is who spoils the child.

[Illustration: "'An' I shall be a player, too' ... says Willy Shakespeare"]

But for Will Shakespeare the curtain had risen on a new world, a world of giant, of hero, of story, a world of glitter, of pageant, of scarlet and purple and gold. And now henceforth the flagstoned floor about the chimney was a stage upon which Mother and Brother and Kitty, the maid, at little Will's bidding, with Will himself, played a part; a stage where Virtue, in other words Will with the parcel-gilt goblet upside down upon his head for crown, ever triumphed over Vice, in the person of dull Kitty, with her knitting on the stool; or where, according to the play, in turn, Noah or Abraham or Jesus Christ walked in Heaven, while Herod or Pilate, Cain or Judas, burned in yawning Hell.

VI

But as spring came, the garden offered a broader stage for life. The Shakespeare house was in Henley Street, and a fine house it was-too fine, some held, for a man in John Shakespeare's circumstances-two-storied, of timber and plaster, with dormer-windows and a penthouse over its door. And like its neighbors, the house stood with a yard at the side, and behind, a garden of flowers and fruit and herbs. And here the boy played the warm days through, his mother stepping now and then to the lattice window to see what he was about. And, gazing, often she saw him through tears, because of a yearning love over him, the more because of the two children dead before his coming.

[Illustration: "His mother stepping now and then to the lattice window ..."]

And Will, seeing her there, would tear into the house and drag her by the hand forth into the sweet, rain-washed air.

"An' see, Mother," he would tell her, as he haled her on to the sward beyond the arbor, "here it is, the story you told us yester-e'en. Here is the ring where they danced last night, the little folk, an' here is the glow-worm caught in the spider's web to give them light."

But something had changed Mary Shakespeare's mood. John Shakespeare, chief bailiff and burgess of Stratford, was being sued for an old debt, and one which Mary Shakespeare had been allowed to think was paid. Thereupon came to light other outstanding debts of which she had not known which must be met. John Shakespeare, with irons in so many fires, seemed forever to have put money out, in ventures in leather, in wool, in corn, in timber, and to have drawn none in. And now he talked of a mortgage on the Asbies estate.

"Never," Mary told herself, with a look at little Will, at toddling Gilbert at her feet, with a thought for the unborn child soon to add another inmate to the household-"not with my consent. When the time comes they are grown, what will be left for them?"