d," she mused,
standing at the window and tapping gently upon the pane, "that for all
one can see, that dear old thing in the blue bonnet, crossing the
road with her basket on her arm, has never heard that there was such
a person? Yet it all goes on: lawyers hurrying to their work, cabmen
squabbling for their fares, little boys rolling their hoops, little
girls throwing bread to the gulls, as if there weren't a Shakespeare in
the world. I should like to stand at that crossing all day long and say:
'People, read Shakespeare!'"

Katharine sat down at her table and opened a long dusty envelope. As
Shelley was mentioned in the course of the letter as if he were alive,
it had, of course, considerable value. Her immediate task was to decide
whether the whole letter should be printed, or only the paragraph which
mentioned Shelley's name, and she reached out for a pen and held it in
readiness to do justice upon the sheet. Her pen, however, remained in
the air. Almost surreptitiously she slipped a clean sheet in front of
her, and her hand, descending, began drawing square boxes halved and
quartered by straight lines, and then circles which underwent the same
process of dissection.

"Katharine! I've hit upon a brilliant idea!" Mrs. Hilbery exclaimed--"to
lay out, say, a hundred pounds or so on copies of Shakespeare, and give
them to working men. Some of your clever friends who get up meetings
might help us, Katharine. And that might lead to a playhouse, where we
could all take parts. You'd be Rosalind--but you've a dash of the old
nurse in you. Your father's Hamlet, come to years of discretion; and
I'm--well, I'm a bit of them all; I'm quite a large bit of the fool,
but the fools in Shakespeare say all the clever things. Now who shall
William be? A hero? Hotspur? Henry the Fifth? No, William's got a touch
of Hamlet in him, too. I can fancy that William talks to himself when
he's alone. Ah, Katharine, you must say very beautiful things when
you're together!" she added wistfully, with a glance at her daughter,
who had told her nothing about the dinner the night before.

"Oh, we talk a lot of nonsense," said Katharine, hiding her slip of
paper as her mother stood by her, and spreading the old letter about
Shelley in front of her.

"It won't seem to you nonsense in ten years' time," said Mrs. Hilbery.
"Believe me, Katharine, you'll look back on these days afterwards;
you'll remember all the silly things you've said; and you'll fi