CHAPTER XXXIII
CICELY DISAPPEARS

HAT Master Will Shakspere should be go great

seemed passing strange to Nick, he felt sosoonathome

with him. It seemed as if the master-maker of plays had

a magic way of going out to and about the people he met,

and of fitting his humor to them as though he were a
glover with their measure in his hand.

With Nick he was nothing all day long but a jolly, wise,
and gentle-hearted boy, wearing his greatness like an old
cloth coat, as if it were a long-accustomed thing, and quite
beyond all pride, and went about his business in a very
simple way. But in the evening when the wits were met
together at his house, and Nick sat on the hindmost bench
and watched the noble gentlemen who came to listen to the
sport, Master Will Shakspere seemed to have the knack of
being ever best among them all, yet of never too much
seeming to be better than the rest.

And though, for the most part, he said but little, save
when some pet fancy moved him, when he did speak his

conversation sparkled like a little meadow brook that
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