A Warwickshire Lad

IX

A year or two more, and school grew more irksome. Father fumed, and Mother sighed and drew Will against her knee whereon lay new little Sister Ann while little Sister Joan toddled about the floor. "Canst not seem to care for your books at all, son?" Mother asked, brushing Will's red brown hair out of his eyes. "Canst not see how it frets Father, who would have his oldest son a scholar and a gentleman?"

He meant to try. But hadn't Dad himself let him off one day to tramp at heels after him and Uncle Henry in Arden Forest? Will Shakespeare at eleven is a sorry student.

There comes a day when he is a big boy near thirteen years old. It is a time when the soft, hot winds of spring and the scent and the pulse of growing things get in the blood, and set one sick panting for the woods and the feel of the lush green underfoot and the sound of running water. Not that Will Shakespeare can put it into words-he only knows that when the smell of the warm, newly turned earth comes in at the schoolroom window and the hum of a wandering bee rises above the droning of the lesson, he lolls on the hacked and ink-stained desk and gazes out at the white clouds flecking the blue, and all the truant blood in his sturdy frame pulls against his promises.

Then at length comes a day when the madness is strong upon him and he hides his books, his Cato's Maxims, or perchance his Confabulationes Pueriles, under the garden hedge, and skirting the town, makes his way along the river. And there, hidden among the willows and green alders and rustling sedge, he spends the morning; and when in the heat of the day the fish refuse to nibble, he takes his hunk of bread out of his pocket and lies on his back among the rushes, while lazy dreams flit across his consciousness as the light summer clouds rock mistily across the blue.

[Illustration: "Hidden among the willows ... he spends the morning"]

And, the wandering madness still upon him, in the afternoon he skirts about and tramps toward Shottery. It is no new thing to go to Shottery with or without Mother for a day at the Hathaways'. There always has been rebellion in the blood of Will Shakespeare, and there is a slender, wayward, grown-up somebody at Shottery who understands. Ann Hathaway has stayed often in Stratford with the Shakespeare household. Mother loves Ann; Father teases and twits her; the young men, swains and would-be sweethearts, swarm about her like bumblebees about the honeysuckle at the garden gate.

And when she is there, Will himself seldom leaves her side. He has oft been a rebellious boy, whereat Mother has sighed and Father has sworn; but Ann, staying with them, and she alone, has laughed. She has understood.

And there have been times when this tall brown-haired young person has seized his hand, as if she too had moments of rebellion, and the two have run away-away from the swains and the would-be sweethearts, the Latin grammar and the scoldings, to wander about the river banks and the lanes.

[Illustration: "The two have run away ... to wander about the river banks."]