“Why, surely! Who could see thee without liking, or hear thy voice and not love thee? Love thee, Nick? Why, on my word and honour, lad, I love thee with all my heart.”
“Thou hast chosen strange ways to show it, Master Carew,” said Nick, and looked straight up into the master player’s eyes.
Carew turned upon his heel and ordered the dinner.
It was a good dinner: fat roast capon stuffed with spiced carrots; asparagus, biscuit, barley-cakes, and honey; and to end with, a flaky pie, and Spanish cordial sprinkled with burnt sugar. With such fare and a keen appetite, a marvelous brand-new suit of clothes, and Cicely chattering gaily by his side, Nick could not be sulky or doleful long. He was soon laughing; and Carew’s spirits seemed to rise with the boy’s.
“Here, here!” he cried, as Nick was served the third time to the pie; “art hollow to thy very toes? Why, thou’lt eat us out of house and home—hey, Cicely? Marry come up, I think I’d best take Ned Alleyn’s five shillings for thine hire, after all! What! Five shillings? Set me in earth and bowl me to death with boiled turnips!—do they think to play bob-fool with me? Five shillings! A fico for their five shillings—and this for them!” and he squeezed the end of his thumb between his fingers. “Cicely, what dost think?—Phil Henslowe had the face to match Jem Bristow with our Nick!”
“Why, daddy, Jem hath a face like a halibut!”
“And a voice like a husky crow. Why, Nick’s mere shadow on the stage is worth a ton of Jemmy Bristows. ’Twas casting pearls before swine, Nick, to offer thee to Henslowe and Alleyn; but we’ve found a better trough than theirs—hey, Cicely Goldenheart, haven’t we? Thou art to be one of Paul’s boys.”
“Paul who?”
Carew lay back in his chair and laughed. “Paul who? Why, Saint Paul, Nick,—’tis Paul’s Cathedral boys I mean. Marry, what dost say to that?”
“I’d like another barley-cake.”