yard through which pleasantries could be exchanged
with grooms and chauffeurs. There was a parlour, too, off the hall--the
cosiest of parlours with cream walls and black oak beams and supports,
two fireplaces round which were grouped inviting arm-chairs, tables with
books and papers, many bowls of daffodils. And all over the house hung
old prints of scenes in the plays; glorious pictures, some of
them--ghosts and murders over which Mhor gloated.

They went before luncheon to the river and sailed up and down in a small
steam-launch named _The Swan of Avon_. Jean thought privately that the
presence of such things as steam-launches were a blot on Shakespeare's
river, but the boys were delighted with them, and at once began to plan
how one might be got to adorn Tweed.

In the afternoon they walked over the fields to Shottery to see Anne
Hathaway's cottage.

Jean walked in a dream. On just such an April day, when shepherds pipe
on oaten straws, Shakespeare himself must have walked here. It would be
different, of course; there would be no streets of little mean houses,
only a few thatched cottages. But the larks would be singing as they
were to-day, and the hawthorn coming out, and the spring flowers abloom
in Anne Hathaway's garden.

She caught her breath as they went out of the sunshine into the dim
interior of the cottage.

This ingle-nook ... Shakespeare must have sat here on winter evenings
and talked. Did he tell Anne Hathaway wonderful tales? Perhaps, when he
was not writing and weaving for himself a garment of immortality, he was
just an everyday man, genial with his neighbours, interested in all the
small events of his own town, just Master Shakespeare whom the children
looked up from their play to smile at as he passed.

"Oh, Jock," Jean said, clutching her brother's sleeve. "Can you really
believe that _he_ sat here?--actually in this little room? Looked out of
the window--isn't it _wonderful_, Jock?"

Jock, like Mr. Fearing, ever wakeful on the enchanted ground, rolled his
head uncomfortably, sniffed, and said, "It smells musty!" Both he and
Mhor were frankly much more interested in the fact that ginger-beer and
biscuits were to be had in the cottage next door.

They mooned about all afternoon vastly content, and had tea in the
garden of a sort of enchanted cottage (with a card in the window which
bore the legend, "_We sell home-made lemonade, lavender, and pot-pourri
_"), among apple trees and spring flo