FROM the windows of the New Place there came a great sound of men singing together, and this was the quaint old song they sang: 

     “Then here’s a health to all kind hearts
          Wherever they may be;
      For kindly hearts make but one kin
          Of all humanity.

      “And here’s a rouse to all kind hearts
          Wherever they be found;
      For it is the throb of kindred hearts
          Doth make the world go round!”

“Why, Will,” said Master Burbage, slowly setting down his glass, “’tis altogether a midsummer night’s dream.”

“So it is, Dick,” answered Master Shakspere, with a smile, and a far-away look in his eyes.  “Come, Nicholas, wilt thou not sing for us just the last few little lines of ‘When Thou Wakest,’ out of the play?”

Then Nick stood up quietly, for they all were his good friends there, and Master Drayton held his hand while he sang: 

“Every man shall take his own,
In your waking shall be shown: 
Jack shall have Jill,
Nought shall go ill,
The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well!”

They were very still for a little while after he had done, and the setting sun shone in at the windows across the table.  Then Master Shakspere said gently, “It is a good place to end.”

“Ay,” said Master Jonson, “it is.”

So they all got up softly and went out into the garden, where there were seats under the trees among the rose-bushes, and talked quietly among themselves, saying not much, yet meaning a great deal.

But Nick and Cicely said “Good-night, sirs,” to them all, and bowed; and Master Shakspere himself let them out at the gate, the others shaking Nick by the hand with many kind wishes, and throwing kisses to Cicely until they went out of sight around the chapel corner.

When the children came to the garden-gate in front of Nick’s father’s house, the red roses still twined in Cicely’s hair, Simon Attwood and his wife Margaret were sitting together upon the old oaken settle by the door, looking out into the sunset.  And when they saw the children coming, they arose and came through the garden to meet them, Nick’s mother with outstretched hands, and her face bright with the glory of the setting sun.  And when she came to where he was, the whole of that long, bitter year was nothing any more to Nick.

For then—­ah, then—­a lad and his mother; a son come home, the wandering ended, and the sorrow done!

She took him to her breast as though he were a baby still; her tears ran down upon his face, yet she was smiling—­a smile like which there is no other in all the world:  a mother’s smile upon her only son, who was astray, but has come home again.

Oh, the love of a lad for his mother, the love of a mother for her son—­unchanged, unchanging, for right, for wrong, through grief and shame, in joy, in peace, in absence, in sickness, and in the shadow of death!  Oh, mother-love, beyond all understanding, so holy that words but make it common!