216 MASTER SKYLARK

was thronged with company. The windows were bright,
and the air was full of voices. Tables had been brought
out into the garden and set beneath the arbor toward the
riverside. The vines of the arbor were shooting forth
their first pink-velvet leaves, and in the moonlight their
shadows fell like lacework across the linen cloths, blurred
by the glow of the lanterns hung upon the posts.

The folds in the linen marked the table-tops with
squares like a checker-board, and Nick stood watching from
the tap-room door, as if it werea game. Not that he cared
for any game; but that watching dulled the teeth of the
hunger in his heart to be out of the town and back among
the hills of Warwickshire, now that the spring was there.

“What, there!—a pot of sack!” cried one gay fellow
with a silver-bordered cloak. “ A pot of sack?” cried out
another with a feather like a rose-bush in his cap; “two
pots ye mean, my buck!” “Ods-fish my skin!” bawled
out a third—“ ods-fish my skin! Two pots of beggarly
sack on a Saturday night and a moon like this? Three
pots, say I—and make it malmsey, at my cost! What,
there, knave! the table full of pots—I’ll pay the score.”

At that they all began to laugh and to slap one another
on the back, and to pound with their fists upon the board
until the pewter tankards hopped; and when the tapster’s
knave came back they were singing at the top of their
lungs, for the spring had gotten into their wits, and they
were beside themselves with merriment.

Master Tom Heywood had a little table to himself off in
a corner, and was writing busily upon a new play. “A