Mother is laughing at him. Little Will recognizes that and smiles back, but half-heartedly, for he is not through confessing.

"I don't like to wear it down my back," says he. "It tickles."

"Wear what?" asks Mother, but[14] even as she speaks must partly divine, for a finger and thumb go searching down between his little nape and the collar of his doublet, and in a moment they draw it forth, a bit of witches' elm.

"Gammer, she sewed it there," says Will.

A little frown was gathering between Mother's brows, which was making small Willy Shakespeare feel still more reassured and comfortable, when suddenly she gave a cry and start, half rising, so that he, startled too, slid perforce to the floor, clinging to her gown.

Whereupon Mother sank back in her chair, her hand pressed against the kerchief crossed over her bosom,[15] and laughed shamefacedly, for it had been nothing more terrible that had startled her than big, purring Graymalkin, the cat, insinuating his sleek back under her hand as he arched and rubbed about her chair. And so, sitting down shamefacedly, she gathered Will up again and called him goose and little chuck, as if he and not she had been the one to jump and cry out.

But he laughed boisterously. The joke was on Mother, and so he laughed loud, as becomes a man when the joke is on the women folk.

"Ho!" said Will Shakespeare.

"Sh-h-h!" said Mother.

But the mischief was done and Will must get out of her lap, for [16]little Brother Gilbert, awakened, was whimpering in the cradle.

Will clambered u