are for the part. Then why go and look at it?" said
Bice with straightforward philosophy.

All this she poured forth upon Jock in a low clear voice, as if there
was no one else near. Jock, for his part, was carried away by the flood.

"I don't know about Got and Regnier. But what we are going to see is
Shakespeare," he said, with a little awe, "that is not just like a
common play."

Mr. Derwentwater had been astonished by Bice's indifference to his own
instructive remarks. It was this perhaps more than her beauty which had
called his attention to her, and he had listened as well as he could to
the low rapid stream of her conversation, not without wonder that she
should have chosen Jock as the recipient of her confidence. What she
said, though he heard it but imperfectly, interested him still more. He
wanted to make her out--it was a new kind of study. While Lucy, by his
side, went on tranquilly with some soft talk about the theatre, of which
she knew very little, he thought, he made her a civil response, but gave
all his attention to what was going on at the other side; and there was
suddenly a lull of the general commotion, in which he heard distinctly
Bice's next words.

"_What_ is Shakespeare?" she said; then went on with her own
reflections. "What I want to see is the world. I have never yet gone
into the world; but I must know it, for it is there I have to live. If
one could live in Shakespeare," cried the girl, "it would be easy; but I
have not been brought up for that; and I want to see the world--just a
little corner--because that is what concerns me, not a play. If it is
only for the play, I think I shall not go."

"You had much better come," said Jock; "after all it is fun, and some of
the fellows will be good. The world is not to be seen at the theatre
that I know of," continued the boy. "Rows of people sitting one behind
another, most of them as stupid as possible--you don't call that the
world? But come--I wish you would come. It is a change--it stirs you
up."

"I don't want to be stirred up. I am all living," cried Bice. There
seemed to breathe out from her a sort of visible atmosphere of energy
and impatient life. Looking across this thrill in the air, which somehow
was like the vibration of heat in the atmosphere, Jock's eyes
encountered those of his tutor, turned very curiously, and not without
bewilderment, to the same point as his own. It gave the boy a curious
sensation which he could not defi