“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 dignified 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 bust 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 complacently.  “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 impatience, 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.