“Fudge!” said Simon Attwood. “Born to hang’ll never drown!”
When, however, the next day crept around and still his son did not come home, a doubt stole into the tanner’s own heart. Yet when his wife was for starting out to seek some tidings of the boy, he stopped her wrathfully.
“Nay, Margaret,” said he; “thou shalt na go traipsing around the town like a hen wi’ but one chick. I wull na ha’ thee made a laughing-stock by all the fools in Stratford.”
But as the third day rolled around, about the middle of the afternoon the tanner himself sneaked out at the back door of his tannery in Southam’s lane, and went up into the town.
“Robin Getley,” he asked at the guildschool door, “was my son wi’ thee overnight?”
“Nay, Master Attwood. Has he not come back?”
“Come back? From where?”
Robin hung his head.
“From, where?” demanded the tanner. “Come, boy!”
“From Coventry,” said Robin, knowing that the truth would out at last, anyway.