The country folk, enchanted, called for more and more.
Nick sang another song, and he and Cicely danced the galliard together, while the piper piped and the fiddler fiddled away like mad; and the moon went down, and the cottage doors grew ruddy with the light inside. Then Dame Pettiford gave them milk and oat-cakes in a bowl, a bit of honey in the comb, and a cup of strawberries; and Cicely fell fast asleep with the last of the strawberries in her hand.
So they came up out of the south through Shipston-on-Stour, in the main-traveled way, and with every mile Nick felt home growing nearer. Streams sprang up in the meadow-lands, with sedgy islands, and lines of silvery willows bordering their banks. Flocks and herds cropped beneath tofts of ash and elm and beech. Snug homes peeped out of hazel copses by the road. The passing carts had a familiar look, and at Alderminster Nick saw a man he thought he recognized.
Before he knew that he was there they topped Edge Hill.
There lay Stratford! as he had left it lying; not one stick or stack or stone but he could put his finger on and say, “This place I know!” Green pastures, grassy levels, streams, groves, mills, the old grange and the manor-house, the road that forked in three, and the hills of Arden beyond it all. There was the tower of the guildhall chapel above the clustering, dun-thatched roofs among the green and blossom-white; to left the spire of Holy Trinity sprang up beside the shining Avon. Bull Lane he made out dimly, and a red-tiled roof among the trees. “There, Cicely,” he said, “there—there!” and laughed a queer little shaky laugh next door to crying for joy.
Wat Raven was sweeping old Clopton bridge. “Hullo, there, Wat! I be come home again!” Nick cried. Wat stared at him, but knew him not at all.
Around the corner, and down High street. Fynes Morrison burst in at the guildschool door. “Nick Attwood’s home!” he shouted; and his eyes were like two plates.
Then the last lane—and the smoke from his father’s house!
The garden gate stood open, and there was some one working in the yard. “It is my father, Cicely,” he laughed. “Father!” he cried, and hurried in the lane.
Simon Attwood straightened up and looked across the fence. His arms were held a little out, and his hands hung down with bits of moist earth clinging to them. His brows were darker than a year before, and his hair was grown more gray; his back, too, stooped. “Art thou a-calling me?” he asked.