at others. No one can escape the power of language, let
alone those of English birth brought up from childhood, as Mrs. Hilbery
had been, to disport themselves now in the Saxon plainness, now in the
Latin splendor of the tongue, and stored with memories, as she was, of
old poets exuberating in an infinity of vocables. Even Katharine
was slightly affected against her better judgment by her mother's
enthusiasm. Not that her judgment could altogether acquiesce in the
necessity for a study of Shakespeare's sonnets as a preliminary to the
fifth chapter of her grandfather's biography. Beginning with a perfectly
frivolous jest, Mrs. Hilbery had evolved a theory that Anne Hathaway had
a way, among other things, of writing Shakespeare's sonnets; the idea,
struck out to enliven a party of professors, who forwarded a number of
privately printed manuals within the next few days for her instruction,
had submerged her in a flood of Elizabethan literature; she had come
half to believe in her joke, which was, she said, at least as good as
other people's facts, and all her fancy for the time being centered
upon Stratford-on-Avon. She had a plan, she told Katharine, when, rather
later than usual, Katharine came into the room the morning after her
walk by the river, for visiting Shakespeare's tomb. Any fact about the
poet had become, for the moment, of far greater interest to her than the
immediate present, and the certainty that there was existing in England
a spot of ground where Shakespeare had undoubtedly stood, where his very
bones lay directly beneath one's feet, was so absorbing to her on this
particular occasion that she greeted her daughter with the exclamation:

"D'you think he ever passed this house?"

The question, for the moment, seemed to Katharine to have reference to
Ralph Denham.

"On his way to Blackfriars, I mean," Mrs. Hilbery continued, "for you
know the latest discovery is that he owned a house there."

Katharine still looked about her in perplexity, and Mrs. Hilbery added:

"Which is a proof that he wasn't as poor as they've sometimes said. I
should like to think that he had enough, though I don't in the least
want him to be rich."

Then, perceiving her daughter's expression of perplexity, Mrs. Hilbery
burst out laughing.

"My dear, I'm not talking about YOUR William, though that's another
reason for liking him. I'm talking, I'm thinking, I'm dreaming of MY
William--William Shakespeare, of course. Isn't it od