"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 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 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 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-yard through which pleasantries could be exchanged with and . There was a parlour, too, off the hall—the of parlours with cream walls and black oak beams and supports, two fireplaces round which were grouped 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 to the river and sailed up and down in a small steam-launch named The Swan of Avon. Jean thought that the presence of such things as steam-launches were a on Shakespeare's river, but the boys were delighted with them, and at once began to plan how one might be got to 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 would be singing as they were to-day, and the 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 , he was just an everyday man, 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 ground, rolled his head uncomfortably, , and said, "It smells musty!" Both he and Mhor were 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 flowers 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 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 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 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 , 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 to the evening post. Tragedy and the commonplace things of life—but Jean, for the moment, was lifted far from either. She was seeing a new heaven and a new earth. Words were not needed. She looked into Richard Plantagenet's eyes and knew that he wanted her, and she put her hands out to him like a trusting child.
 
* * * * *
 
When Jock and Mhor reached the dining-room and found Richard Plantagenet seated beside Jean they were rapturous in their greetings, pouring questions on him, demanding to know how long he meant to stay.
 
"As long as you stay," he told them.
 
"Oh, good," Jock said. "Are you fearfully keen on Shakespeare? Jean's something awful. It gives me a sort of hate at him to hear her."
 
"Oh, Jock," Jean protested, "surely not. I'm not nearly as bad as some of the people here. I don't haver quite so much…. I was in the drawing-room this morning and heard two women talking, an English woman and an American. The English woman remarked that Shakespeare wasn't a , and the American protested, 'Oh, don't say. He had a great White Soul.'"
 
"Gosh, Maggie!" said Jock. "What a beastly thing to say about anybody! If Shakespeare could see Stratford now I expect he'd laugh—all the shops full of little heads, and pictures of his house, and models of his birthplace … it's enough to put anybody off being a genius."
 
"I was dreadfully snubbed in a shop to-day," said Jean, smiling at her lover. "It was a very nice mixed-up shop with cakes and crucifixes and little stucco figures, presided over by a lady with black lace on her head. I remembered Mrs. Jowett's passion for stucco saints in her bedroom, and picked one up, remarking that it would be a nice remembrance of Stratford. 'Oh, surely not, madam,' said the shocked voice of the shop-lady, 'surely a nobler memory'—and I found it was a figure of Christ."
 
"Jean simply rushed out of the shop," said Jock, "and she hadn't paid, and I had to go in again with the money."
 
"See what I've got," Mhor said, producing a parcel from his pocket. He unwrapped it, revealing a small of Shakespeare.
 
"It's a wee Shakespeare to send to Mrs. M'Cosh—and I've got a card for
Bella Bathgate—a funny one, a pig. Read it."
He handed the card to Lord Bidborough, who read aloud the words issuing from the mouth of the pig:
 
  "You may push me,
   You may shove,
   But I never will be druv
   From Stratford-on-Avon."
"Excellent sentiment, Mhor—Miss Bathgate will be pleased."
 
"Yes," said Mhor . "I thought she'd like a pig better than a Shakespeare one. She said she wondered Jean would go and make a fuss about the place a play-actor was born in. She says she wouldn't read a word he wrote, and she didn't seem to like the bits I said to her…. This isn't the first time, Richard Plantagenet, I've sat up for dinner."
 
"Isn't it?"
 
"No. I did it at Penrith and Shrewsbury and last night here."
 
"By Jove, you're a man of the world now, Mhor."
 
"It mustn't go on," said Jean, "but once in a while…."
 
"And d'you know where I'm going to-night?" Mhor went on. "To a theatre to see a play. Yes. And I shan't be in bed till at least eleven o'clock. It's the first time in my life I've ever been outside after ten o'clock, and I've always wanted to see what it was like then."
 
"No different from any other time," Jock told him. But Mhor shook his head. He knew better. After-ten-o'clock Land must be different….
 
"This is a great night for us all," Jean said. "Our first play. You have seen it often, I expect. Are you going?"
 
"Of course I'm going. I wouldn't miss Jock's face at a play for anything…. Or yours," he added, leaning towards her. "No, Mhor. There's no hurry. It doesn't begin for another half-hour … we'll have coffee in the other room."
 
Mhor was in a fever of , and quite ten minutes before the hour they were in their seats in the front row of the balcony. Oddly enough, Lord Bidborough's seat happened to be adjoining the seats taken by the Jardines, and Jean and he sat together.
 
It was a crowded house, for the play was being played by a new company for the first time that night. Jean sat silent, much too content to talk, watching the people round her, and listening idly to snatches of conversation. Two women, evidently inhabitants of the town, were talking behind her.
 
"Yes," one woman was saying; "I said to my sister only to-day, 'What would we do if there was a sudden alarm in the night?' If we needed a doctor or a policeman? You know, my dear, the servants are all as old as we are. I don't really believe there is anyone in our road that can run."
 
The other laughed comfortably and agreed, but Jean felt chilled a little, as if a cloud had obscured for a second the sun of her happiness. In this gloriously young world of unfolding leaves and budding and lambs and singing birds and lovers, there were people old and done who could only walk slowly in the sunshine, in whom the spring could no longer put a spirit of youth, who could not run without being weary. How ugly age was! Grim, menacing: Age, I do thee….
 
The curtain went up.
 
The youngest son of Sir Rowland de Boys, the young Orlando, "a youth unschooled and yet learned, full of noble device, of all sorts enchantingly beloved," talked to old Adam, and then to his own most brother. The scene changed to the lawn before the Duke's palace. Lord Bidborough bade Jean observe the scenery and dresses. "You see how simple it is, and vivid, rather like Noah's Ark scenery? And the dresses are a revolt against the tradition that made Rosalind a sort of principal boy…. Those dresses are all copied from old missals…. I rather like it. Do you approve?"
 
Jean was not in a position to judge, but said she certainly approved.
 
Rosalind and Celia were saying the words she knew so well. Touchstone had come in—that ; Monsieur le Beau, with his mouth full of news; and again, the young Orlando o'er-throwing more than his enemies.
 
And now Rosalind and Celia are planning their flight…. It is the Forest of Arden. Again Orlando and Adam speak together, and Adam, with all his years brave upon him, assures his master, "My age is as a lusty winter, frosty but ."
 
The words came to Jean with a new significance. How Shakespeare knew … why should she mourn because Age must come? Age was beautiful and calm, for the seas are quiet when the winds give o'er. Age is done with passions and discontents and strivings. Probably those women behind her who had sighed comfortably because nobody in their road could run, whom she pitied, wouldn't change with her to-night. They had had their life. It wasn't sad to be old, Jean told herself, for as the physical sight dims, the soul sees more clearly, and the light from the world to come illumines the last dark bit of the way….
 
They went out between the acts and walked by the river in the moonlight and talked of the play.
 
Jock and Mhor were loud in their approval, only regretting that
Touchstone couldn't be all the time on the stage. Lord Bidborough asked
Jean if it came up to her expectations.
"I don't know what I expected…. I never imagined any play could be so vivid and gay and alive…. I've always loved Rosalind, and I didn't think any actress could be quite my idea of her, but this girl is. I thought at first she wasn't nearly pretty enough, but she has the kind of face that becomes more charming the more you look at it, and she is so and witty and impertinent."
 
"And Rabelaisian," added her companion. "It really is a very good show. There is a sort of youthful freshness about the that is very engaging. And every part is so competently filled. Jaques is astonishingly good, don't you think? I never heard the 'seven ages' speech so well said."
 
"It sounded," Jean said, "as if he were saying the words for the first time, thinking them as he went along."
 
"I know what you mean. When the great lines come on it's a temptation to the actor to draw himself together and clear his throat, and rather address them to the audience. This fellow leaned against a tree and, as you say, seemed to be thinking them as he went along. He's an good actor … I don't know when I enjoyed a show so much."
 
The play wore on to its merry conclusion; all too short the Jardines found it. Jock's at the love-sick shepherd knew no bounds, but he highly approved of Rosalind because, he said, she had such an face.
 
"Who did you like best, Richard Plantagenet?" Mhor asked as they came down the steps.
 
"Well, I think, perhaps the most character was 'the old religious man' who converted so the Duke Frederick."
 
"Yes," Jean laughed. "I like that way of getting rid of an objectionable character and enriching a deserving one. But Jaques went off to throw in his lot with the converted Duke. I rather that."
 
"To-morrow," said Mhor, who was skipping along, very wide awake and happy in After-ten-o'clock ............