‘Here is a pretty bit of river for your pencil, Mr. Erin.’
‘Hush! hush!’ rejoined that gentleman reprovingly; ‘it is the Avon. We are on the threshold of his very birthplace.’
It was on the tip of Mr. Dennis’s tongue, who had been thinking of nothing but Margaret for the last half-hour, to inquire, ‘Whose birthplace?’—which would have lost him the other’s friendship for ever. Fortunately he recollected himself (and Shakespeare) just in time, and in some trepidation at his narrow escape, which his friend took for reverential awe, murmured some more suitable reply.
William Henry, on the other hand, was not so fortunate. At the instigation of the guard (who had a commission from the innkeeper on the guests he brought him), he leant down from the coach-top to inquire which house Mr. Erin meant to patronise, suggesting that the party should put up at the ‘Stratford Arms,’ as being the best accommodation.
‘You fool!’ roared the old gentleman; ‘we put up at the “Falcon,” of course. The idea,’ he continued indignantly, ‘of our going elsewhere, when the opportunity is afforded us of residing under the very roof which once sheltered our immortal bard!’
‘Shakespeare did not live in an inn, did he, uncle?’ inquired Margaret demurely. She knew perfectly well that he had not done so, but was unwilling to let this outburst against her cousin pass by without some kind of protest.
‘Well, no,’ admitted Mr. Erin; ‘but he lived just opposite to it, and, it is supposed—indeed, it may be reasonably concluded—that he patronised it for his—ahem—convivial entertainments.’
‘I suppose there is some foundation for the story of the “Topers” and the “Sippers,”’ observed Dennis, ‘and for the bard being found under the crab-tree vino et somno.’
‘There may be, there may be,’ returned the other indifferently; ‘but as for Shakespeare being beaten, even in a contest of potations, that is entirely out of the question. It was not in the nature of the man. If he ran, he would run quickest; if he jumped, he would jump the highest; and if he drank, he would undoubtedly have drunk deeper than anybody else.’
The Falcon Inn had no great extent of accommodation—it was perhaps too full of ‘association’ for it—but Margaret had a neat chamber enough; and, since it looked on the Guild Chapel and Grammar School where Shakespeare had been educated, and on the walls which surrounded the spot where he had spent his latter days, the niece of her uncle could hardly have anything to complain of. The young men had an attic apiece. As to what sort of a room was assigned to Mr. Samuel Erin, he could not have told you himself, for he took no notice of it. His head was always out of the window. It was his first sight of the shrine of his idol, and the very air seemed to be laden with incense from it.