156 MASTER SKYLARK

eggs and milk, cream cheese and cordial, like very kings;
so that Nick could not help thriving.

The master-player very seldom left him by himself to
mope or to be melancholy ; but, while ever vaguely prom-
ising to let him go, did everything in his power to make
him rather wish to stay; so that Nick was constantly sur-
prised by the free-handed kindness of this man whom he
had every other reason in the world, he thought, for deem-
ing his worst enemy.

When there were any new curiosities in Fleet street, —
wild men with rings in their noses, wondrous fishes,
puppet-shows, or red-capped baboons whirling on a pole,
—Carew would have Nick see them as well as Cicely ; and
often took them both to Bartholomew’s Fair, where there
was a giant eating raw beef and a man dancing upon a
rope high over the heads of the people. He would have
had Nick every Thursday to the bear-baiting in the Paris
Garden circus beside; but one sight of that brutal sport
made the boy so sick that they never went again, but to
the stage-plays at the Rose instead, which Nick enjoyed
immensely, for Carew himself acted most excellently, and
Master Tom Heywood always came and spoke kindly to
the lonely boy.

For, in spite of all, Nick’s heart ached so at times that
he thought it would surely break with longing for his
mother. And at night, when all the house was still and
dark, and he alone in bed, all the little, unconsidered
things of home—the beehives and the fragrant mint beside
the kitchen door, the smell of the baking bread or frying