So, Tom, what is there left to do? How can
I shift without the boy? Nay, Tom, it will not serve. There's
Cicely--not one penny laid by for her against a rainy day; and I'll be
gone, Tom, I'll be gone--it is not morning all day long--we cannot last
forever. Nay, I cannot leave him go!"

"But, sir," broke in Nick, wretchedly, holding fast to Hey wood's arm,
"ye said that I should go!"

"Said!" cried the master-player, with a bitter smile; "why, Nick, I'd
say ten times more in one little minute just to hear thee sing than I
would stand to in a month of Easters afterward. Come, Nick, be fair.
I'll feed thee full and dress thee well and treat thee true--all for
that song of thine."

"But, sir, my mother--"

"Why, Carew, hath the boy a mother, too?" cried the writer of comedies.

"Now, Heywood, on thy soul, no more of this!" cried the master-player,
with quivering lips. "Ye will make me out no man, or else a fiend. I
cannot let the fellow go--I will not let him go." His hands were
twitching, and his face was pale, but his lips were set determinedly.
"And, Tom, there's that within me will not abide even _thy_ pestering.
So come, no more of it! Upon my soul, I sour over soon!"

So they came on gloomily past the bear-houses and the Queen's kennels.
The river-wind was full of the wild smell of the bears; but what were
bears to poor Nick, whose last faint hope that the master-player meant
to keep his word and send him home again was gone?

They passed the Paris Garden and the tall round play-house that Francis
Langley had just built. A blood-red banner flaunted overhead, with a
large white swan painted thereon; but Nick saw neither the play-house
nor the swan; he saw only, deep in his heart, a little gable-roof among
old elms, with blue smoke curling softly up among the rippling leaves;
an open door with tall pink hollyhocks beside it; and in the door,
watching for him till he came again, his own mother's face. He began to
cry silently.

"Nay, Nick, my lad, don't cry," said Heywood, gently; "'twill only make
bad matters worse. _Never_ is a weary while; but the longest lane will
turn at last: some day thou'lt find thine home again all in the
twinkling of an eye. Why, Nick, 'tis England still, and thou an
Englishman. Come, give the world as good as it can send."

Nick raised his head again, and, throwing the hair back from his eyes,
walked stoutly along, though the tears still trickled down his cheeks.

"Sing thou my son