Yet money must be had, she admitted that. But to encumber the estate!
She shrank from her own people knowing; she had inherited more of her father's estate than her sisters, and there had been feeling, and her brothers-in-law, Lambert and Webb, would be but upheld in their prophecies about her husband's capacity to care for her property. She would not have them know. "Talk it over first with your father, John," she told her husband, "or with your brother Henry. Let us not rush blindly into this thing. You had promised anyhow, you remember, to take Will out to the sheep-shearing."
VII
So the next morning John Shakespeare swung Will up on the horse before him, and the two rode away through the chill mistiness of the dawn, Will kissing his hand back to Mother in the doorway. Bound for Grandfather's at Snitterfield they were. So out through the town, past the scattering homesteads with their gardens and orchards, traveled Robin, the stout gray cob, small Will's chattering voice as high-piped as the bird-calls through the dawn; on into the open country of meadows and cultivated fields, the mists lifting rosy before the coming sun, through lanes with mossy banks, cobwebs spun between the blooming hedgerows heavy with dew, over the hills, past the straggling ash and hawthorn of the dingles. And everywhere the cold, moist scent of dawn, and peep and call of nest-birds.
"Bound for Grandfather's at Snitterfield they were"
And so early has been their start and so good stout Robin's pace, that reaching the Snitterfield farm, they find everything in the hurly-burly of preparation for sheep-shearing. So, after a hearty kissing by the womenfolk, aunts and cousins, Will, with a cake hot from the baking thrust into his hand, goes out to the steading to look around. At Snitterfield there are poultry, and calves, too, in the byre, and little pigs in the pen back of the barn. Then comes breakfast in the kitchen with the farm-hands with their clattering hobnailed shoes and tarry hands, after which follows the business of sheep-washing, which Will views from the shady bank of the pool, and in his small heart he is quite torn because of the plaintive bleatings of the frightened sheep. But he swallows it as a man should. There is a pedler haunting the sheep-shearing festivals of the neighborhood. The women have sent for him to bring his pack to Snitterfield, and Dad bids Will choose a pair of scented gloves for Mother—and be quick; they must be off for Stratford before the noon.