None the less Hester was very glad to have Mr. Imber's present of little china models of the cottage and the birthplace. To the others he gave either these or coloured busts of Shakespeare; and to Gregory an ivory pencil-case containing a tiny piece of glass into which you peeped and saw twelve views of Stratford-on-Avon.
After dinner they sat down to the serious task of writing on the picture postcards which they had bought for themselves, while Gregory earned sixpence by sticking stamps on Mr. Imber's vast supply. Jack felt it his duty also to write to William:
DEAR WILLIAM,
"Thanks for your very kind and informing letter. We are glad you are having such a good time. This is a rotten caravan, and you are well out of it. "Yours,
"J. R.
"P.S.—Don't fall off your clothes-horse too often."
CHAPTER 13
THE ADVENTURE OF THE YOUNG POLICEMAN
Mrs. Avory's train to London was an early one, and the Slowcoaches had left Stratford behind them before ten, and were by eleven at Binton Bridges, where the river again joins the road, and where they stopped to discuss the question whether to go straight on through Bidford and the Salfords, or to take the road to the south of the Avon through Welsford and the Littletons.
Robert was very firm for the Bidford way, and, of course, he won; and, as it happened, it was very well that he did.
It was a fine, bracing day, and they were all very vigorous after the two days of rest in Stratford, and they therefore trudged gaily along in the sun, not stopping again until just before Bidford, on the hill where Shakespeare's crab-tree used to grow, under which he had slept so long after one of his drinking contests. For it seems to have been his habit to go now and then with other Stratford friends to neighbouring villages to see whether they or the villagers could drink the most—a custom that even Hester found it hard to defend. Indeed, she got no farther than to say: "I am sure he was naturally troubled by thirst."
The tree has gone, but another stands in its place, and by this the children sat and ate a little lunch, and talked about the poet. Robert repeated to them the old rhyme about the Warwickshire villages which Shakespeare is said to have composed—possibly in this very field: