“Sing thou my songs,” said Heywood, heartily, “and I will be thy friend—let this be thine earnest.” As he spoke he slipped upon the boy’s finger a gold ring with a green stone in it cut with a tall tree: this was his seal.
They had now come through the garden to the Rose Theatre, where the Lord Admiral’s company played; and Carew was himself again. “Come, Nicholas,” said he, half jestingly, “be done with thy doleful dumps—care killed a cat, they say, lad. Why, if thy hateful looks could stab, I’d be a dead man forty times. Come, cheer up, lad, that I may know thou lovest me.”
“But I do na love thee!” cried Nick, indignantly.
“Tut! Do not be so dour. Thou’lt soon be envied by ten thousand men. Come, don’t make a face at thy good fortune as though it were a tripe fried in tar. Come, lad, be pleased; thou’lt be the pet of every high-born dame in London town.”
“I’d rather be my mother’s boy,” Nick answered simply.
CHAPTER XIX
THE ROSE PLAY-HOUSE
The play-house was an eight-sided, three-storied, tower-like building of oak and plastered lath, upon a low foundation of yellow brick. Two outside stairways ran around the wall, and the roof was of bright-red English tiles with a blue lead gutter at the eaves. There was a little turret, from the top of which a tall ash stave went up; and on the stave, whenever there was to be a play, there floated a great white flag on which was a crimson rose with a golden heart, just like the one that Nick with such delight had seen come up the Oxford road a few short days before.
Under the stairway was a narrow door marked “For the Playeres Onelie”; and in the doorway stood a shrewd-faced, common-looking man, writing upon a tablet which he held in his hand. There was a case of quills at his side, with one of which he was scratching busily, now and then prodding the ink-horn at his girdle. He held his tongue in his cheek, and moved his head about as the pen formed the letters: he was no expert penman, this Phil Henslowe, the stager of plays.
He looked up as they came to the step.