III
The next day things seem different. One no longer feels afraid, while the memory of Gammer's tales is alluring. Will remembers, too, that greens from the forest were ordered sent to the Sadlers for the making of garlands for the Town Hall revels. Small Willy Shakespeare slipped off from home that afternoon.
Reaching the Sadlers, he stopped on the threshold abashed. The living-room was filled with neighbors come to help—young men, girls, with here and there some older folk—all gathered about a pile of greens in the center of the floor, from which each was choosing his bit, while garlands and wreaths half done lay about in the rushes.
But, though his baby soul dreams it not, there is ever a place and welcome for a chief bailiff's little son. They turn at his entrance, and Mistress Sadler bids him come in; her cousin at her elbow praises his eyes—shade of hazel nut, she calls them. And Gammer, peering to find the cause of interruption and spying him, pushes a stool out from under her feet and curving a yellow, shaking finger, beckons and points him to it. But while doing so, she does not stay her quavering and garrulous recital. He has come, then, in time to hear the tale?
"An' the man, by name of Gosling," Gammer is saying, "dwelt by a churchyard——"
Will Shakespeare slips to his place on the stool.
Hamnet is next to him, Hamnet Sadler who is eight, almost a man grown. Hamnet's cheeks are red and hard and shining, and he stands square and looks you in the face. Hamnet has a fist, too, and has thrashed the butcher's son down by the Rother Market, though the butcher's son is nine.
Here Hamnet nudges Will. What is this he is saying? About Gammer, his very own grandame?