Betty did spend the evening “writing letters in Washington Irving’s room at the Red Horse,” as she had planned. It was in that quaint, tiny parlor that Irving wrote his well-known paper about Stratford-on-Avon, and perhaps Betty hoped to benefit by the literary atmosphere. At any rate, the letters were accomplished with great ease and rapidity, after her curiosity had been satisfied by an examination of the room.

Washington Irving’s armchair is there, and the old poker with which he is said to have tended the fire. On the walls hang the pictures of a number of actors and actresses who have played Shakespearean parts. Except for these, the room differs very little from the rest of the inn. About nine-thirty, the children started up to bed, Betty, enthusiastic at the prospect of a high four-poster, which “you really have to run and give a jump to get into.” She and Barbara did not stay long awake to enjoy it, however, for it seemed as though their heads had hardly touched the pillows before the maid was calling them, and the bright sun was pouring in at the windows.

Very early they set out to walk “across the fields to Anne.” The little village of Shottery, where stands the cottage known all the world over as “Anne Hathaway’s,” is only about a mile distant from Stratford, and our party gayly took the path through the fields,—perhaps the very one over which Shakespeare trod when he was Anne’s lover. This led them first past the “back-yards” of Stratford, then over a stile and through the green meadows, where daisies and cowslips abound. As they went along, Mrs. Pitt repeated to them the following little verse from Shakespeare’s “Winter’s Tale”:

The boys learned this, and half-chanted, half-sang it over and over while they all kept time to the rhythm.

“There’s Shottery, I guess!” Betty called, interrupting the singers, as she caught sight of a pretty little group of thatched-roofed cottages. “It seems a very short ‘mile-a,’ doesn’t it!”

Anne Hathaway’s cottage is even more picturesque than its neighbors, or does this only seem so because of the associations which it has for all? Every one knows the picture of the cottage. One end stands close to the country road, and in front of it, behind a green hedge, is the garden. Growing on the cottage walls are at least half a dozen different kinds of roses, as well as honeysuckle and jasmine, which clamber way up and mingle with the heavy thatch. The old casement-windows with their thick panes of glass were swung open to let in the morning’s fresh air. A young girl dressed in pink and carrying a broom, appeared on the doorstep as Philip opened the gate. She was evidently rather surprised to see such early visitors, but she said they might go in. While Mrs. Pitt paused to speak with her, Betty, who had already rushed inside, called out: “Here’s the old settle! I know it from its pictures!”

Sure enough, there it was, close beside the great fireplace,—we hope just where it has always been ever since Anne Hathaway and Shakespeare sat there together.

“But, Mother, is that really the same bench, and did Anne truly live here?” questioned the all too matter-of-fact Barbara.

“My dear daughter,” began Mrs. Pitt, feigning great severity; “banish that thought immediately! Just for one little hour we are going to know that Anne did live here,—that Will said ‘Will you?’ and Anne said ‘I will,’ right on this very bench. I quite refuse to listen to any doubts on the subject for to-day! You write our names in the book, please, Philip. I’m going to rest myself here in Anne’s rocking-chair!”

The girl with the broom looked at her visitor in a puzzled way, and began,—“But, lady, I brought that chair here with me only——” But Mrs. Pitt quickly interrupted her, asking some trifling question. Her illusions were not to be disturbed, it seemed, and the girl beat a retreat.

“Well, Mother,” said Philip, “you aren’t the only one who has ever believed in the house! Here in this old Visitors’ Book are the names of Dickens, Longfellow, Holmes, General Grant, Edwin Booth, Mary Anderson, and——”

“Never mind the rest, Phil; if General Grant said so, it’s true! He knew what he was talking about!” And so John settled the question.

A flag-stone floor is all this little room can boast of, and a low ceiling of huge timbers, but it has an air of homelikeness and cosy comfort, nevertheless. At the windows are flowers which nod to their cousins out in the garden; some gray knitting usually lies on the table; and there is the huge fireplace with all its cranes, different hooks, pots and kettles; and the crowning glory of all, the old oak settle, upon which every visitor religiously seats himself.

“Isn’t there any upstairs?” demanded John, before many minutes.

“Oh, yes! May we go up, please?” Mrs. Pitt asked of the attendant. “Yes, thank you; I know the way, and I’ll be careful.”

So they climbed the rickety stairs, and saw a little bedroom under the eaves, in which stands an old, very forlorn-looking “four-poster.”

“I’m so glad that tiresome, truthful person let us come up alone,” said Mrs. Pitt, panting. “If she had come, too, I could not have explained that this was Anne’s bedroom. She used to sit by this window and dream about Will, and watch for his coming, too. She——”

“Don’t spoil it all, Mother,” pleaded Barbara. “Perhaps it really was her room!”

“And didn’t I just say as much?” her mother laughed. “But seriously! This room never appealed to me as does the one below. Anne couldn’t have been very comfortable up here. If she was tall, she could hardly have stood up straight because of the slanting roof.”

So laughingly, they went downstairs and toward the patch of bright yellow sun-flowers in the farthest corner of the garden. The young girl followed them. “Shall I point out the different flowers?” she timidly inquired.

They were duly shown the “rosemary for remembrance,” the “pansies for thoughts,” and a great many others of Shakespeare’s loved flowers. The view of the cottage from the group of tall sun-flowers is most charming. There is surely nothing in the world more picturesque than a thatched-roof.

Arrived once again at the Red Horse, they all packed up their belongings, and Mrs. Pitt went over to the station with a boy, who wheeled the luggage. When the suit-cases were duly labeled “Leamington,” and the station-master had received his tip of a shilling, to insure his remembering them, Mrs. Pitt returned to the hotel, where she found five bicycles lined up. At sight of her, the rest came running out. “This is great!” cried John, already astride one of the bicycles, and impatient for the start.

“Yes,” answered Mrs. Pitt, much pleased by the enthusiasm. “I thought this would be rather better than driving out to Charlecote and back, and then taking the train to Leamington. I know the roads, and am delighted at riding once more! I had my divided-skirt with me, you see, in case of this very emergency. You girls will manage somehow; your skirts are fairly short.” This was to Barbara and Betty, and then they were off.

The ride of about four miles to Charlecote seemed all too short, for, as Betty expressed it, “the roads are so smooth and level that I can’t stop. My wheel just goes of itself!” They first came in sight of Charlecote Park, where there are still great numbers of deer. As the party passed, the graceful creatures rose from the tall grass, making an extremely pretty picture. They tried in vain to coax them to the fence.

“Deer in Shakespeare’s time must have been tamer, or he couldn’t have stolen one,” observed John knowingly.

“Isn’t the ‘Tumble-down Stile’ near here, Mother?” Barbara questioned.

“Yes, it’s just beyond this turn in the road. There it is now! So long as we are believing all we see to-day, I feel quite justified in telling you that when the youthful Shakespeare was escaping with his deer on his shoulders, he fled by way of this stile. Touch that top rail, John, and see what will happen. No, this end of the rail!”

As John put his hand on the place which Mrs. Pitt designated, that end gave way and hit the three other rails, so that they also bent down to the ground. John was much amused, and repeated the motion again and again.

“Did Shakespeare fall over that stile when he was trying to climb it with the deer, and did they catch him then?” he asked eagerly.

“Yes, that’s the story, and, of course, we know it is true! Now, come this way to the gatehouse. I was able to get permission, through an influential friend, to take you inside. I am so glad, for not every one has such good fortune. This woodland,” motioning to the fine old oaks, as they sped along, “is also a part of the ancient Forest of Arden. That wood was so dense in this county in the thirteenth century, that the King ordered the Constable of Warwickshire to cut down six acres in breadth between Warwick and Coventry, to insure the greater safety of travelers.”

They were now getting distant glimpses of the fine Elizabethan residence itself. It was built in 1558, the year of Elizabeth’s accession to the throne, and was made in the general shape of the letter E, in honor of that Queen. The color of the ancient bricks has been softened and beautified by the hand of Time, which has also caused heavy vines to grow upon, and in certain places, almost to cover the walls. The different courts, gateways, and gables, are therefore most picturesque. The present owner, a descendant of the Sir Thomas Lucy whom Shakespeare knew and ridiculed, permits visitors (the privileged few) to see the Great Hall and the library.

The former is the most interesting of all the apartments, for here one stands in the very room where Shakespeare is said to have been questioned by the pompous Sir Thomas Lucy, after the deer-stealing episode. This lofty hall has a slight modern atmosphere about it now, but the dark paneling, bits of really old glass in the windows, and, above all, the bust of Shakespeare, recall the past very vividly to mind.

Most historians admit that there is some truth in the story that Shakespeare came into unpleasant contact with the Lord of Charlecote, through a more or less serious boyish prank; but not all believe that there can be any truth in the statement that he was brought into the Great Hall by the forester who caught up with him at the “Tumble-down Stile.” It may be, however, that Shakespeare was later on friendly terms with the Lucy family, and so it is possible that he was then entertained in the hall.

“You know,” remarked Mrs. Pitt, “that the disgrace of that affair with Sir Thomas Lucy is thought to have caused Shakespeare to leave his native town and go to seek his fortune in far-away London. Therefore the prank is said by some to have been a most important, though seemingly trivial event in the Poet’s life. Shakespeare’s revenge upon the owner of lovely Charlecote came later, when he very plainly described Sir Thomas in his plays, under the name of ‘Justice Shallow.’”

Another room at Charlecote is very attractive,—that is, the old library. There is preserved some wonderful inlaid furniture which tradition describes as a gift from Queen Elizabeth to Leicester, and which consequently would once have found a place at Kenilworth Castle. A very charming view of the lawn sloping gently down to the river is seen from the library windows.

Within the precincts of Charlecote is a beautiful church which was erected by Mrs. Henry Spenser Lucy, in 1852, upon the site of an ancient chapel. Here there are huge tombs in memory of three Lucys, and also an interesting monument to the wife of Sir Thomas, with its tribute to her lovely character, supposed to have been written by Shakespeare’s “Justice Shallow” himself, who seems at least to have been a devoted husband. This last-mentioned monument was originally a part of the older edifice, of course.

It was now about noon, and they were feeling rather hungry, so at a short distance from Charlecote they selected an inviting place by the roadside, and there they unpacked the lunch which Mrs. Pitt had brought. How good it did taste! They all thoroughly enjoyed the picnic, and when a scarlet automobile went rushing past them, the ladies’ veils fluttering in the breeze, Betty merely remarked:—“An auto’s lovely, of course, but to-day I’d rather have a bicycle. It seems more appropriate, somehow.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Pitt responded. “When you are in such a beautiful county as this, and want to see it well, a bicycle is best. And then, I think it is more respectful to Shakespeare to go through his beloved haunts at a fairly leisurely pace. I imagine that he never would have understood how any one could care so little for Warwickshire as to go whirling and jiggling along through it in a motor, at thirty miles an hour.”

Betty had absent-mindedly picked a daisy from the tall grass in which she was sitting, and was pulling off its petals, reciting the little verse about:

“Oh, dear! It’s thief!” she cried, making up a wry face. “I’d rather have any one than that!”

“Try the other verses,” suggested Barbara, entering into the fun.

“What others?” asked Betty in much surprise. “I didn’t know there were any more.”

“Dear me, yes,” Mrs. Pitt broke in. “I used to know several of them myself,—the one about the house:

and about the conveyances:

Wasn’t there one more, Barbara? Oh, yes, about the dress materials:

“Well, well!” exclaimed Betty. “I never heard those. They must be just English.”

“Perhaps so. At any rate, when I was a little girl, I used to say them, and believe in them, too. I lived here in Warwickshire, in my childhood, you know; my father was rector of a tiny village not far from Coventry. There are ever so many queer old rhymes, verses, and customs still common among Warwickshire children.”

“Tell Betty about some of them, Mother,” Barbara urged. “I’m sure that she’d like to hear, and we don’t need to start on just yet.”

Mrs. Pitt leaned thoughtfully against the lowered bars, at the entrance to a field. “I’ll have to think about it,” she said; but she soon added, “There was the ‘Wishing Tree.’ I remember that.”

“What was it?” the two girls eagerly questioned. John and Philip, privately considering this talk “silly stuff,” had retired to the farther side of a hay-rick, where they were whittling industriously.

“The ‘Wishing Tree’ was a large elm that stood in the park of a neighboring nobleman’s estate. To all the girls of the village, it was a favorite spot, and we used to steal through the hedge and very cautiously approach the tree. If the cross old gardener happened to see us he’d come limping in our direction as fast as his lame legs could carry him, calling out angrily that if we did not ‘shog off right away, he’d set his ten commandments in our faces.’ That’s an odd expression, isn’t it? It’s very, very old,—so old that Shakespeare was familiar with it and used it in one of his plays—‘King Henry VI,’ I think. The gardener meant that he would scratch us with his ten fingers—but he wouldn’t have, for he was too kind-hearted in spite of his threats. He was a queer man, with a brown, wrinkled old face. I can see him just as though it were yesterday.”

“What was that you said?” asked Betty. “‘Shog off!’ What does it mean?”

“Simply Warwickshire for ‘Go away,’” was Mrs. Pitt’s careless answer. Her thoughts had gone back to her childhood.

“You forgot to tell us what the ‘Wishing Tree’ was for,” Betty timidly suggested, fearful of interrupting her reminiscences.

“Why, so I did! We would tiptoe all alone up to the tree, and if, under its wide branches, we made a wish, we thought it was sure to come true. There was another curious old game of finding out how many years we were to live, by a ball. We would bounce it upon the hard ground, and catching it again and again in our hands, would chant all the while:

If that had proved true, I shouldn’t be here to-day to tell of it, for I was never very skillful with the ball, and could only catch it ten or fifteen times at the most.”

Mrs. Pitt laughed. “There is so much of ancient folk-lore here in Warwickshire,” she went on. “I remember that the old country people always crossed themselves or said some charm for a protection, when one lone magpie flew over their heads. That meant bad luck, for the verses said:

Why, what is it, Barbara?”

Barbara had jumped to her feet, and was wildly waving her arms about her head. “It’s only a bee,” she said, rather ashamed. “I don’t like them quite so near.”

It was delightful to ride along on this “rare day in June,” through the fair county of Warwickshire,—the “Heart of England.” If they were just a bit uncomfortably warm on the hill-top where the sun beat down upon the fields and open road, they were soon again in the beautiful woodland, where the cool air refreshed them, or passing through the street of some remote village, shaded by giant elms. In each little hamlet, as well as the row of peaceful thatched cottages, with smoke curling upwards from their chimneys, there was the ancient vine-covered church, with perhaps a Norman tower, where the rooks found a home, and the gray old rectory close at hand.

When Betty asked if it was in a church “like this” that Mrs. Pitt’s father preached, and if her former home resembled the particular rectory they then chanced to be passing, Mrs. Pitt replied, “Yes, my home was somewhat like this one. All English country churches and rectories look very much alike,—that is, almost all are vine-covered, and very old and quaint—yet, I think each has its own very distinct individuality, too.”

Mrs. Pitt, of course, wanted some tea, so about four o’clock they stopped at a clean little cottage, near a stretch of woodland. Mrs. Pitt herself dismounted and stepped up to the door, which stood hospitably open. A little flaxen-haired child ran out curiously at the sound of the knock, and then, frightened, scampered away to call her mother. That good woman, in her neat black dress and stiffly-starched white apron, at once understood the situation.

“You just seat yourselves there under the trees,” she ordered them, “and I’ll bring right out a shive off a loaf of bread, and a tot o’ tea for each of you.”

The young people looked puzzled at this speech, but Mrs. Pitt smilingly led the way to the place their hostess designated. In a surprisingly short time the woman brought out a table (having scorned the assistance of the two boys), spread it with an immaculately clean cloth, and set thereon a very tempting loaf of brown bread and a pot of steaming tea. There was also jam, of course. While they enjoyed their meal, she stood by, her hands on her hips, and a radiant smile upon her face at the praises of her guests. Every few moments the little girl would peep out from behind the cottage, and once she almost came up to the group under the trees; but her mother, when she spied her, sent her hastily back, saying by way of an apology:—“She’s all swatched, but she’s only my reckling, you must know.” As they rode away into the woods, the good woman stood in the middle of the road waving her table-cloth for good-by.

“Wasn’t she a dandy!” John burst out. “Couldn’t understand what she said, though! Might just as well have been Greek!”

“She certainly did have some old Warwickshire expressions!” laughed Mrs. Pitt. “I don’t know when I’ve heard that word ‘reckling.’ It simply means her youngest child, who she said was all ‘swatched.’ That signifies being untidy, but I am sure I couldn’t see the tiniest spot of dirt anywhere upon the child.”

Betty was rather glad when they at last jumped off their bicycles at the hotel in Leamington.

“I guess I’m not used to quite such long rides as you,” she said. “It has been beautiful, though, and I wouldn’t have come by train for anything. I just love Warwickshire, and everything about it, especially the language, which I mean to learn while I am here.”