wers and singing birds, and ate
home-made bread and honey, and cakes with orange icing on them. A girl
in a blue gown, who might have been Sweet Anne Page, waited on them, and
Jean was so distressed at the amount they had eaten and at the smallness
of the bill presented that she slipped an extra large tip under a plate,
and fled before it could be discovered.

It was a red-letter day for all three, for they were going to the
theatre that night for the first time. Jean had once been at a play with
her father, but it was so long ago as to be the dimmest memory, and she
was as excited as the boys. Their first play was to be _As You Like It_.
Oh, lucky young people to see, for the first time on an April evening,
in Shakespeare's own town, the youngest, gayest play that ever was
written!

They ran up to their rooms to dress, talking and laughing. They could
not be silent, their hearts were so light. Jean sang softly to herself
as she laid out what she meant to wear that evening. Pamela had made her
promise to wear a white frock, the merest wisp of a frock made of lace
and georgette, with a touch of vivid green, and a wreath of green leaves
for the golden-brown head. Jean had protested. She was afraid she would
look overdressed: a black frock would be more suitable; but Pamela had
insisted and Jean had promised.

As she looked in the glass she smiled at the picture she made. It was a
pity Pamela couldn't see how successful the frock was, for she had
designed it.... Lord Bidborough had never seen her prettily dressed. Why
did Pamela never mention him? Jean realised the truth of the old saying,
"Speak weel o' ma love, speak ill o' ma love, but aye speak o' him."

She looked into the boys' room when she was ready and found them only
half dressed and engaged in a game of cock-fighting. Having admonished
them she went down alone. She went very slowly down the last flight of
stairs (she was shy of going into the dining-room)--a slip of a girl
crowned with green leaves. Suddenly she stopped. There, in the hall
watching her, alone but for the "boots" with the wrinkled, humorous face
and eyes of amused tolerance, was Richard Plantagenet.

Behind her where she stood hung a print of _Lear_--the hovel on the
heath, the storm-bent trees, the figure of the old man, the shivering
Fool with his "Poor Tom's a-cold." Beside her, fastened to the wall,
was a letter-box with a glass front full of letters and picture-cards
waiting to be taken