22 MASTER SKYLARK

“Ay, that they don’t! Why, hark ’e, Nick! This
morning, since Sir Thomas has gone home, and the bur-
gesses’ heads have all cooled down from the sack and the
clary they were in last night, la! but they are in a pretty
stew, my father says, for fear that they have given offense
to the Lord Admiral. So they have spoken the master-
player softly, and given him his freedom out of hand, and
a long gold chain to twine about his cap, to mend the
matter with, beside.”

“Whee-ew!” whistled Nick. “I wish I were a master-
player !”

“Oh, but he will not be pleased, and says he will have
his revenge on Stratford town if he must needs wait until
the end of the world or go to the Indies after it. And
he has had his breakfast served in Master Geoffrey Inch-
bold’s own room at the Swan, and swears that he will
walk the whole way to Coventry sooner than straddle the
horse that the burgesses have sent him to ride.”

“What! Is he at the inn? Why, let’s go down and
see him.”

“Master Brunswood says that he will birch whoever
cometh late,” objected Hal Saddler.

“Birch?” groaned Nick. “Why, he does nothing but
birch! <A fellow can na say his ‘swum, es, est’ without
catching it. And as for getting through the ‘genitivo’
and ‘vocativo’ without a downright threshing—” He
shrugged his shoulders ruefully as he remembered his
unlearned lesson. Everything had gone wrong with him
that morning, and the thought of the birching that he