Very agile was the lady in finding her way into the saddle. For all that she was not quite clever enough to defeat this incorrigible play-actor. He sprang to her stirrup while she had one foot still on the ground and hoisted her up with an address that enforced her respect, and with so grave an air of courtesy as tacitly to compel her own. All the same she was angry. And she had sense enough to know that it was illogical to be so. Yet she swung her horse around sharply in order to give expression to her state of mind. And as the falconer, John Markham by name, confided the merlin to the accustomed wrist of his mistress, he turned back an instant to scowl at the player. It was even as if he would ask him who the devil he was, and what the devil he did there. The player removed his hat with its single cock’s feather in a manner that was almost tenderly ironical. It had hardly been a display of Court manners of which he had been the recipient. But he was too much a man of the world to look for those everywhere. And above all here was youth in its glamour, youth in its sorcery. For the sake of a stuff so precious he would forgive a crudity greater than this. With a sigh of delight the player stood at the tailor’s door to watch this fine pair ride very slowly and haughtily down the street. For all their air of class consciousness and their open contempt of the townspeople, which their youth alone saved from being ridiculous, they made a glorious pair in the eye of the part-proprietor of the Globe Theatre, London. That was an eye to judge men and things as none other since the world began. Neither Mistress Anne Feversham nor the falconer was aware of that fact, and had they been aware of it they had not cared a button. All that they did know and all that they cared was that the worthy burgesses of Nottingham were stealing glances of awe and admiration at them. In a word, they were causing a sensation, and were very pleasantly alive to the fact. Yes, undoubtedly a gallant pair. John Markham, in spite of his superior condition and rising renown, rode behind his mistress at a respectful distance of ten yards. They sat their horses with great skill and assurance. First one and then the other, as they walked them slowly down the street, would touch them gently with the spur, in order to enjoy the pleasure of showing them off in the sight of the townspeople. The player, still standing at the tailor’s door, could not take his eyes from the spectacle. Almost wistfully, and yet in a kind of entrancement, he watched them until at last there came a turn in the street and they were lost to view. Then he went within to rejoin his scandalized friend, who to compose his mind had had recourse already to the needle and shears. “I never saw the like o’ that,” said Master Nicholas Tidey. “It’s rare to be the quality. But that’s nothing to you, Master Shakespeare. I reckon you see it every day o’ the week.”