is is a rotten caravan, and you are well out
of it. "Yours,

"J. R.

"P.S.--Don't fall off your clothes-horse too often."

CHAPTER 13

THE ADVENTURE OF THE YOUNG POLICEMAN

Mrs. Avory's train to London was an early one, and the Slowcoaches had
left Stratford behind them before ten, and were by eleven at Binton
Bridges, where the river again joins the road, and where they stopped
to discuss the question whether to go straight on through Bidford and
the Salfords, or to take the road to the south of the Avon through
Welsford and the Littletons.

Robert was very firm for the Bidford way, and, of course, he won; and,
as it happened, it was very well that he did.

It was a fine, bracing day, and they were all very vigorous after the
two days of rest in Stratford, and they therefore trudged gaily along
in the sun, not stopping again until just before Bidford, on the hill
where Shakespeare's crab-tree used to grow, under which he had slept so
long after one of his drinking contests. For it seems to have been his
habit to go now and then with other Stratford friends to neighbouring
villages to see whether they or the villagers could drink the most--a
custom that even Hester found it hard to defend. Indeed, she got no
farther than to say: "I am sure he was naturally troubled by thirst."

The tree has gone, but another stands in its place, and by this the
children sat and ate a little lunch, and talked about the poet. Robert
repeated to them the old rhyme about the Warwickshire villages which
Shakespeare is said to have composed--possibly in this very field:

"Piping Pebworth, dancing Marston,
Haunted Hillborough, hungry Grafton,
Dodging Exhall, Papist Wixford,
Beggarly Broom and drunken Bidford."

Bidford is not drunken now; it is only sleepy: a long steep street,
with, at the top, the church and a beautiful old house, now cottages,
once the Falcon Inn, where Shakespeare used to drink, and where the
chair came from that they had seen at the birthplace yesterday; and at
the foot the Swan Inn and the old bridge.

Bidford is built very like a wateringplace--that is to say, it is all
on one side of the river. The water to-day looked very tempting,
especially as a great number of boats were lying on it waiting to be
hired; but Robert sternly ordered his party onwards.

Has it ever occurred to you that in the life of every policeman there
is one day when he wears his majestic uniform in public for the fi