So far David had made an excellent guide.  They had never once diverged from the road they meant to take, but this third day of the run turned out to be somewhat confused.  They started off almost at once on the wrong road and found themselves riding up a deep green lane into a farmyard.  Out again on the highway David found the number of cross-roads terribly perplexing.  Once he urged Stark to ask directions from a cottage.  Stark did so and leapt back into his seat.

“Which road do we take?” David asked, as five offered themselves.

“Didna catch what they said,” Stark remarked as he chose a road at random.

“Didna catch it,” was Stark’s favourite response to everything.  Later on they came to the top of a steep hill ornamented by an enormous warning-post with this alarming notice—­“Cyclists dismount.  Many accidents.  Some fatal.”  Stark went on unconcernedly, and Jean shouted at him, holding desperately to the side of the car, as if her feeble strength would help the brakes.  “Stark!  Stark!  Didn’t you see that placard?”

“Didna catch it,” said Stark, as he swung light-heartedly down an almost perpendicular hill into the valley of the Severn.

“I do think Stark’s a fool,” said Jean bitterly, wrathful in the reaction from her fright.  “He does no damage on the road, and of course I’m glad of that.  I’ve seen him stop dead for a hen, and the wayfaring man, though a fool, is safe from him; but he cares nothing for what happens to the poor wretched people inside the car.  As nearly as possible he had us over the parapet of that bridge.”

And later, when they found from the bill at lunch-time that Stark’s luncheon had consisted of “one mineral,” she thought that the way he had risked all their lives must have taken away his appetite.

The car ran splendidly that day—­David said it was getting into its stride—­and they got to Oxford for tea and had time to go and see David’s rooms before they left for Stratford.  But David would let them see nothing else.  “No,” he said; “it would be a shame to hurry over your first sight.  You must come here after Stratford.  I’ll take rooms for you at the Mitre.  I want to show you Oxford on a May morning.”

It was quite dark when they reached Stratford.  To Jean it seemed strange and delicious thus to enter Shakespeare’s own town, the Avon a-glimmer under the moon, the kingcups and the daisies asleep in the meadows.

The lights of the Shakespeare Hotel shone cheerily as they came forward.  A “boots” with a wrinkled, whimsical face came out to help them in.  Shaded lights and fires (for the evenings were chilly) made a bright welcome, and they were led across the stone-paved hall with its oaken rafters, gate-legged tables, and bowls of spring flowers, up a steep little staircase hung with old prints of the plays, down winding passages to the rooms allotted to them.  Jean looked eagerly at the name on her door.