would not have minded, but the pilgrims of love got scant sympathy
from that sturdy misogynist.

CHAPTER XXIV

"It was a lover and his lass,
With a hey and a ho, and a hey nonino,
That o'er the green corn-fields did pass,
In the spring-time, the only pretty ring time...."

_As You Like It_.

Next morning Jean's eyes wandered round the dining-room as if looking
for someone, but there was no one she had ever seen before among the
breakfasters at the little round tables in the pretty room with its low
ceiling and black oak beams. To Jean, unused to hotel life and greatly
interested in her kind, it was like a peep into some thrilling book. She
could hardly eat her breakfast for studying the faces of her neighbours
and trying to place them.

Were they all Shakespeare lovers? she wondered.

The people at the next table certainly looked as if they might be: a
high-browed, thin-faced clergyman with a sister who was clever (from her
eye-glasses and the way her hair was done, Jean decided she must be very
clever), and a friend with them who looked literary--at least he had a
large pile of letters and a clean-shaven face; and they seemed, all
three, like Lord Lilac, to be "remembering him like anything."

There were several clergymen in the room; one, rather fat, with a smug
look and a smartly dressed wife, Jean decided must have married an
heiress; another, with very prominent teeth and kind eyes, was
accompanied by an extremely aged mother and two lean sisters.

One family party attracted Jean very much: a young-looking father and
mother, with two girls, very pretty and newly grown up, and a boy like
Davie. They were making plans for the day, deciding what to see and what
to leave unseen, laughing a great deal, and chaffing each other, parents
and children together. They looked so jolly and happy, as if they had
always found the world a comfortable place. They seemed rather amused to
find themselves at Stratford among the worshippers. Jean concluded that
they were of those "not bad of heart" who "remembered Shakespeare with a
start."

Jock and Mhor were in the highest spirits. It seemed to them enormous
fun to be staying in a hotel, and not an ordinary square up-and-down
hotel, but a rambling place with little stairs in unexpected places, and
old parts and new parts, and bedrooms owning names, and a long,
low-roofed drawing-room with a window at the far end that opened right
out to the stable-