Past a garden or two and a few cottages; a long garden wail with heavy coping, shutting in treasures of fruit and vegetables; an old inn; a new school-house, built at the corner of a lane shaded by as stately an avenue of elms as any nobleman need desire for the approach to his mansion. And yet mansion there is none at the end of this verdant aisle. The lane is only an accommodation road leading to somebody’s farm. A youthful monitor is trying to drill some small boys in front of the school-porch, and the small boys are defying him; whereat a shrill-voiced woman, unseen in the interior of the school, calls out an occasional word of reproof. All the houses in the little village belong to the past—they have the grace of a day that is dead. In a farm garden a buxom servant in a kilted petticoat is feeding a family of gigantic hens and chickens with something thick and slab out of an iron pot. Daphne and her companions felt that there could have been little change since the old romantic Elizabethan time. The village lay off the beaten tracks. Three or four modern houses, scattered about here and there in spacious gardens, were the only addition time had made to Shottery. They walked briskly along the narrow road, across the bridge where the shallow streamlet came tumbling picturesquely over gray stones. Then a few paces, and before them stood the little block of cottages which genius has transformed into a temple. Whether the building was originally one house, it were difficult to decide. The levels are different; but a variety in levels was the order of that day. The whole block is a timber-framed structure—a panelled house, the panels filled with dab and wattle. Jutting casements, diamond-paned, look out upon an ancient garden, and an ancient well. Beside the house and garden there is an old orchard, where on this day a couple of sheep are placidly nibbling the sweet grass. The cottage is almost smothered in greenery. Honeysuckle, jasmine, roses, hang about the walls as if they loved them. The old timber porch is curtained with flowers. The South Hill carriage was waiting in the lane when Daphne and her companions arrived. The basket had been duly delivered over to Mrs. Baker. She was standing at the door awaiting them with a smiling welcome. ‘So glad to see you, ladies. The kettle’s on the boil, and you can have your tea as soon as you please.’ ‘Thanks, you dear thing,’ cried Daphne; ‘but isn’t it almost sacrilege to drink tea in his room?’ ‘It isn’t everybody I’d let do it, miss; not any of those Americans; though I must say they’re uncommonly civil, and know more about Shakespeare than the common run of English do, and are more liberal in their ways too,’ added Mrs. Baker, with a lively remembrance of half-crowns from Transatlantic visitors. ‘Mrs. Baker,’ began Daphne in a solemn tone, laying a little tawny-gloved hand lightly on the collar of Gerald’s coat, ‘you see this man?’