CICELY DISAPPEARS 243

In the morning, when the world began to stir outside,
and the early light came in at the window, he slipped out
of bed across the floor, and threw the casement wide.
Over the river, and over the town, and over the hills that
lay blue in the north, was Stratford !

The damp, cool air from the garden below seemed a
primrose whiff from the lane behind his father’s house.
He could hear the cocks crowing in Surrey, and the lowing
of the kine. There was a robin singing in a bush under
the window, and there was some one in the garden with a
pair of pruning-shears. Snip-snip! snip-snip! he heard
them going. The light in the east was pink as a peach-
bloom and too intense to bear.

“Good-morrow, Master Early-bird!” a merry voice
ealled up to him, and a nosegay dropped on the window-
ledge at his side. He looked down. There in the path
among the rose-trees was Master Will Shakspere, laughing.
He had on an ancient leathern jacket and a hat with a hole
in its crown; and the skirts of the jacket were dripping
with dew from the bushes.

“Good-morrow, sir,” said Nick, and bowed. “It is a
lovely day.”

“Most beautiful indeed! How comes the sun?”

“Just up, sir; the river is afire with it now. O-oh!”
Nick held his breath, and watched the light creep down
the wall, darting long bars of rosy gold through the snowy
bloom of the apple-trees, until it rested upon Master Shak.
spere’s face, and made a fleeting glory there.

Then Master Shakspere stretched himself a little in the