setting out upon the same voyage. He bent his head, saying nothing, but
with a curious certainty that she had read an answer to her inquiry that
satisfied her. At any rate, she rambled off into a description of the
Law Courts which turned to a denunciation of English justice, which,
according to her, imprisoned poor men who couldn't pay their debts.
"Tell me, shall we ever do without it all?" she asked, but at this point
Katharine gently insisted that her mother should go to bed. Looking back
from half-way up the staircase, Katharine seemed to see Denham's eyes
watching her steadily and intently with an expression that she had
guessed in them when he stood looking at the windows across the road.

CHAPTER XXXI

The tray which brought Katharine's cup of tea the next morning brought,
also, a note from her mother, announcing that it was her intention to
catch an early train to Stratford-on-Avon that very day.

"Please find out the best way of getting there," the note ran, "and wire
to dear Sir John Burdett to expect me, with my love. I've been dreaming
all night of you and Shakespeare, dearest Katharine."

This was no momentary impulse. Mrs. Hilbery had been dreaming of
Shakespeare any time these six months, toying with the idea of an
excursion to what she considered the heart of the civilized world. To
stand six feet above Shakespeare's bones, to see the very stones worn by
his feet, to reflect that the oldest man's oldest mother had very likely
seen Shakespeare's daughter--such thoughts roused an emotion in her,
which she expressed at unsuitable moments, and with a passion that would
not have been unseemly in a pilgrim to a sacred shrine. The only strange
thing was that she wished to go by herself. But, naturally enough,
she was well provided with friends who lived in the neighborhood of
Shakespeare's tomb, and were delighted to welcome her; and she left
later to catch her train in the best of spirits. There was a man selling
violets in the street. It was a fine day. She would remember to send Mr.
Hilbery the first daffodil she saw. And, as she ran back into the hall
to tell Katharine, she felt, she had always felt, that Shakespeare's
command to leave his bones undisturbed applied only to odious
curiosity-mongers--not to dear Sir John and herself. Leaving her
daughter to cogitate the theory of Anne Hathaway's sonnets, and the
buried manuscripts here referred to, with the implied menace to the
safety of the heart