THE oriole whistles his nesting song; The bees, as they jostle the clover, Are humming, "It 's June, June!" all day long The listening winds lift the chorus high, Till the corn blades rustle and quiver, And a bit of a tune the lad's lips try As he hies away to the river. The bees they are humming, "It's June, June, June!" He casts him his line in the glassy pool At the foot of the gnarled old willow, And, sitting there, dreams he is done with school- But a sliver of bark comes floating by, And, not now of the fish is he thinking, He feigns it a ship, and the pebbles fly, The bees they keep humming, "It's June, it's June!" When Youth and the year together chime noon, And Laddie is busy a-fishing? No. 8. But over the meadows a clear voice calls It 's Nannie, her turkey-broods cooping; The night-hawks come screaming and swooping. The gossiping rabbits like shadows run But fair in the young night shines a new moon,- MASTER WILL SHAKSPERE was in London streets in which the din and the rush of the town! But there seemed small chance of its coming about; for the doors of Gaston Carew's house were locked and barred by day and by night, as much to keep Nick in as to keep thieves out; and all day long, when Carew was away, the servants went about the lower halls, and Gregory Goole's uncanny face peered after him from every shadowy corner; and when he went with Carew anywhere, the master-player watched him like a hawk, while always at his heels he could hear the clump, clump, clump of the bandy-legged man following after him. Even were he free to go as he pleased, he knew not where to turn; for the Lord Chamberlain's Company would not be at the Blackfriars play-house until Martinmas; and before that time to look for even Master Will Shakspere at random in London town would be worse than hunting for a needle in a haystack. To be sure, he knew that the Lord Chamberlain's men were still playing at the theater in Shoreditch; for Master Carew had taken Cicely there to see the "Two Gentlemen of Verona." But just where Shoreditch was, Nick had only the faintest idea,- somewhere away off by Fins crowd were never still. From a hopeless chase like that Nick shrank back like a snail into its shell. He was not too young to know that there were worse things than to be locked in Gaston Carew's house. It were better to be a safe-kept prisoner there than to be lost in the sinks of London. And so, knowing this, he made the best of it. But Master Shakspere was come back to town, and that was something. It seemed somehow less lonely just to think of it. Yet in truth he had but little time to think of it; for the master-player kept him closely at his strange, new work, and taught him daily with the most amazing patience. He had Nick learn no end of stage parts off by heart, with their cues and "business," entrances and exits; and worked fully as hard as his pupil, reading over every sentence twenty times until Nick had the accent perfectly. He would have him stamp, too, and turn about, and gesture in accordance with the speech, until the boy's arms ached, going with him through the motions one by one, over and over again, unsatisfied, but patient to the last, until Nick wondered. "Nick, my lad," he would often say, with a tired but determined smile, "one little thing done wrong may spoil the finest play, as one bad apple rots the barrelful. We'll have it right, or not at all, if it takes a month o' Sundays." So often he kept Nick before a mirror for an hour at a time, making faces while he spoke his lines, smiling, frowning, or grimacing, as best seemed to fit the part, until the boy grew fairly weary of his own looks. Then sometimes, more often as the time slipped by, Carew |