“Upon my soul,” said Carew, “ye never heard the like of it.  He hath a voice as sweet and clear as if Puck had burst a honey-bag in his throat.”

“No doubt,” replied the other, carelessly; “and all the birds will hide their heads when he begins to sing.  But we don’t want him, Carew—­not if he had a voice like Miriam the Jew.  Henslowe has just bought little Jem Bristow of Will Augusten for eight pound sterling, and business is too bad to warrant any more.”

“Who spoke of selling?” said Carew, sharply.  “Don’t flatter your chances so, Master Alleyn.  I wouldn’t sell the boy for a world full of Jem Bristows.  Why, his mouth is a mint where common words are coined into gold!  Sell him?  I think I see myself in Bedlam for a fool!  Nay, Master Alleyn, what I am coming at is this:  I’ll place him at the Rose, to do his turn in the play with the rest of us, or out of it alone, as ye choose, for one fourth of the whole receipts over and above my old share in the venture.  Do ye take me?”

“Take you?  One fourth the whole receipts!  Zounds! man, do ye think we have a spigot in El Dorado?”

“Tush!  Master Alleyn, don’t make a poor mouth; you’re none so needy.  You and Henslowe have made a heap of money out of us all.”

“And what of that?  Yesterday’s butter won’t smooth to-day’s bread.  ’Tis absurd of you, Carew, to ask one fourth and leave all the risk on us, with the outlook as it is!  Here’s that fellow Langley has built a new play-house in Paris Garden, nearer to the landing than we are, and is stealing our business most scurvily!”

Carew shrugged his shoulders.

“And what’s more, the very comedy for which Ben Jonson left us, because we would not put it on, has been taken up by the Burbages on Will Shakspere’s say-so, and is running famously at the Curtain.”

“I told you so, Master Alleyn, when the fellow was fresh from the Netherlands,” said Carew; “but your ears were plugged with your own conceit.  Young Jonson is no flatfish, if he did lay brick; he’s a plum worth anybody’s picking.”

“But, plague take it, Carew, those Burbages have all the plums!  Since they weaned Will Shakspere from us everything has gone wrong.  Kemp has left us; old John Lowin, too; and now the Lord Mayor and Privy Council have soured on the play again and forbidden all playing on the Bankside, outside the City or no.”

Carew whistled softly to himself.

“And since my Lord Chamberlain has been patron of the Burbages he will not so much as turn a hand to revive the old game of bull- and bear-baiting, and Phil and I have kept the Queen’s bulldogs going on a twelvemonth now at our own expense—­a pretty canker on our profits!  Why, Carew, as Will Shakspere used to say, ’One woe doth tread the other’s heels, so fast they follow!’ And what’s to do?”