Master Shakspere met them with outstretched hands. “Thou young rogue,” said he, smiling, “how thou hast forestalled us! Why, here we have been weeping for thee as lost, strayed, or stolen; and all the while thou wert nestling in the bosom of thine own sweet home. How is the beloved little mother?” “I ha’ na seen my mother,” faltered Nick. “Father will na let me in.” “What? How?” “My father will na have me any more, sir—saith I shall never be his son again. Oh, Master Shakspere, why did they steal me from home?” They were all crowding about now, and Master Shakspere had hold of the boy. “Why, what does this mean?” he asked. “What on earth has happened?” Between the two children, in broken words, the story came out. “Why, this is a sorry tale!” said Master Shakspere. “Does the man not know that thou wert stolen, that thou wert kept against thy will, that thou hast trudged half-way from London for thy mother’s sake?” “He will na leave me tell him, sir. He would na even listen to me!” “The muckle shrew!” quoth Master Jonson. “Why, I’ll have this out with him! By Jupiter, I’ll read him reason with a vengeance!” With a clink of his rapier he made as if to be off at once. “Nay, Ben,” said Master Shakspere; “cool thy blood—a quarrel will not serve. This tanner is a bitter-minded, heavy-handed man—he’d only throw thee in a pickling-vat” “What? Then he’d never tan another hide!” “And would that serve the purpose, Ben? The cure should better the disease—the children must be thought about.” “The children? Why, as for them,” said Master Jonson, in his blunt, outspoken way, “I’ll think thee a thought offhand to serve the turn. What? Why, this tanner calls us vagabonds. Vagabonds, forsooth! Yet vagabonds are gallows-birds, and gallows-birds are ravens. And ravens, men say, do foster forlorn children. Take my point? Good, then; let us ravenous vagabonds take these two children for our own, Will,—thou one, I t’ other,—and by praiseworthy fostering singe this fellow’s very brain with shame.” “Why, here, here, Ben Jonson,” spoke up Master Burbage, “this is all very well for Will and thee; but, pray, where do Hemynge, Condell, and I come in upon the bill? Come, man, ’tis a pity if we cannot all stand together in this real play as well as in all the make-believe.” “That’s my sort!” cried Master Hemynge. “Why, what? Here is a player’s daughter who has no father, and a player whose father will not have him,—orphaned by fate, and disinherited by folly,—common stock with us all! Marry, ’tis a sort of stock I want some of. Kind hearts are trumps, my honest Ben—make it a stock company, and let us all be in.”