ld not seem ever
to carp and faultfind--you know that, don't you?--but that Bardolph----"

"He's a low tavern fellow, I allow, Mary--of course, of course. I know
all you would say--his nose afire and his ruffian black poll ever being
broken in some brawl, but he's a good enough fellow behind it, and
useful to me. You needs must keep on terms with high and low, Mary, to
hold the good will of all. That's why I am anxious to arrange this
matter with Burbage to have the players here, if the Guild will
consent----"

"Players?" says Will, listening at his father's side. "What are
players?"

"Tut," says Dad, "not know the players! They are actors, Will--players.
Hear the boy--not know the players!"

But Mother strokes his hair. "When I told you a tale, sweet, this very
morn, you went to playing it after. I was the Queen-mother, you said,
outside the prison walls, and you and Brother were the little Princes
in the cruel tower, and thus you played. You stood at the casement, two
gentle babes, cradling each other in your arms, and called to me below.
So with the players, child, they play the story out instead of telling
it. But now, these my babes to bed."

III

The next day things seem different. One no longer feels afraid, while
the memory of Gammer's tales is alluring. Will remembers, too, that
greens from the forest were ordered sent to the Sadlers for the making
of garlands for the Town Hall revels. Small Willy Shakespeare slipped
off from home that afternoon.

Reaching the Sadlers, he stopped on the threshold abashed. The
living-room was filled with neighbors come to help--young men, girls,
with here and there some older folk--all gathered about a pile of
greens in the center of the floor, from which each was choosing his bit,
while garlands and wreaths half done lay about in the rushes.

But, though his baby soul dreams it not, there is ever a place and
welcome for a chief bailiff's little son. They turn at his entrance, and
Mistress Sadler bids him come in; her cousin at her elbow praises his
eyes--shade of hazel nut, she calls them. And Gammer, peering to find
the cause of interruption and spying him, pushes a stool out from under
her feet and curving a yellow, shaking finger, beckons and points him to
it. But while doing so, she does not stay her quavering and garrulous
recital. He has come, then, in time to hear the tale?

"An' the man, by name of Gosling," Gammer is saying, "dwelt by a
churchyard--