“And Rabelaisian,” added her companion.  “It really is a very good show.  There is a sort of youthful freshness about the acting 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 uncommonly 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 wrath at the love-sick shepherd knew no bounds, but he highly approved of Rosalind because, he said, she had such an impudent face.

“Who did you like best, Richard Plantagenet?” Mhor asked as they came down the steps.

“Well, I think, perhaps the most worthy character was ’the old religious man’ who converted so opportunely 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 grudged that.”

“To-morrow,” said Mhor, who was skipping along, very wide awake and happy in After-ten-o’clock Land—­“to-morrow I’m going to take Peter to the river and let him snowk after water-rats.  I think he’s feeling lonely—­a Scots dog among so many English people.”

“Stark’s lonely too,” said Jock.  “He says the other chauffeurs have an awful queer accent and it’s all he can do to understand them.”

“Oh, poor Stark!” said Jean.  “I don’t suppose he would care much to see the plays.”

“He told me,” Jock went on, “that one of the other chauffeurs had asked him to go with him to a concert called Macbeth.  When I told him what it was he said he’d had an escape.  He says he sees enough of Shakespeare in this place without going to hear him.  He’s at the Pictures to-night, and there’s a circus coming—­”

“And oh, Jean,” cried Mhor, “it’s the very one that came to Priorsford!”

“Take a start, Mhor,” said Jock, “and I’ll race you back.”

Lord Bidborough and Jean walked on in silence.

At the garden where once had stood New Place—­that “pretty house in brick and timber”—­the shadow of the Norman church lay black on the white street and beyond it was the velvet darkness of the old trees.

“This,” Jean said softly, “must be almost exactly as it was in Shakespeare’s time.  He must have seen the shadow of the tower falling like that, and the trees, and his garden.  Perhaps it was on an April night like this that he wrote: