But these things all vanish from mind when the outer door opens and Dad comes in stamping and blowing. Dad is late, but men are always late. It is expected that they should come in late and laugh at the women who chide and remind them that candles cost and that it makes the maid testy to be kept waiting.
Men should laugh loud like Dad, and catch Mother under the chin and kiss her once, twice, three times. Will means to be just such a man when he grows up, and to fill the room with his big shoulders and bigger laugh as Dad is doing now while tossing Brother Gilbert. He, little Will, he will never be one like Goodman Sadler, Gammer's son-in-law, with a lean, long nose, and a body slipping flatlike through a crack of the door.
And here Dad bends to tweak the ear of Will who would laugh noisily if it hurt twice as badly. It makes him feel himself a man to wink back those tears of pain.
"Dad bends to tweak the ear of Will"
"A busy afternoon this, Mary," says Dad. "Old Timothy Quinn from out Welcombe way was in haggling over a dozen hides to sell. Then Burbage was over from Coventry about that matter of the players, and kept me so that I had to send Bardolph out with your Cousin Lambert to Wilmcote to mark that timber for felling."
Now for all Master Shakespeare's big, off-hand mentioning thus of facts, this was meant for a confession.
Mary Shakespeare had risen to take the crowing Gilbert, handed back to her by her husband, and with the other hand was encircling Will, holding to her skirt. She was tall, with both grace and state, and there was a chestnut warmth in the hair about her clear, white brow and nape, and in the brown of her serene and tender eyes. These eyes smiled at John Shakespeare with a hint of upbraiding, and she shook her head at him with playful reproach.
Little Will saw her do it. He knew too how to interpret such a look. Had Father been naughty?