Betty did spend the evening “writing letters in Washington Irving’s room at the Red Horse,” as she had planned. It was in that quaint, tiny parlor that Irving wrote his well-known paper about Stratford-on-Avon, and perhaps Betty hoped to benefit by the literary atmosphere. At any rate, the letters were accomplished with great ease and rapidity, after her curiosity had been satisfied by an examination of the room.
Washington Irving’s armchair is there, and the old poker with which he is said to have tended the fire. On the walls hang the pictures of a number of actors and actresses who have played Shakespearean parts. Except for these, the room differs very little from the rest of the inn. About nine-thirty, the children started up to bed, Betty, enthusiastic at the prospect of a high four-poster, which “you really have to run and give a jump to get into.” She and Barbara did not stay long awake to enjoy it, however, for it seemed as though their heads had hardly touched the pillows before the maid was calling them, and the bright sun was pouring in at the windows.
Very early they set out to walk “across the fields to Anne.” The little village of Shottery, where stands the cottage known all the world over as “Anne Hathaway’s,” is only about a mile distant from Stratford, and our party gayly took the path through the fields,—perhaps the very one over which Shakespeare trod when he was Anne’s lover. This led them first past the “back-yards” of Stratford, then over a stile and through the green meadows, where daisies and cowslips abound. As they went along, Mrs. Pitt repeated to them the following little verse from Shakespeare’s “Winter’s Tale”:
“Jog on, jog on, the footpath way,
And merrily hent the stile-a;
A merry heart goes all the way,
Your sad tires in a mile-a.”
The boys learned this, and half-chanted, half-sang it over and over while they all kept time to the rhythm.
“There’s Shottery, I guess!” Betty called, interrupting the singers, as she caught sight of a pretty little group of thatched-roofed cottages. “It seems a very short ‘mile-a,’ doesn’t it!”
Anne Hathaway’s cottage is even more picturesque than its neighbors, or does this only seem so because of the associations which it has for all? Every one knows the picture of the cottage. One end stands close to the country road, and in front of it, behind a green hedge, is the garden. Growing on the cottage walls are at least half a dozen different kinds of roses, as well as honeysuckle and jasmine, which clamber way up and mingle with the heavy thatch. The old casement-windows with their thick panes of glass were swung open to let in the morning’s fresh air. A young girl dressed in pink and carrying a broom, appeared on the doorstep as Philip opened the gate. She was evidently rather surprised to see such early visitors, but she said they might go in. While Mrs. Pitt paused to speak with her, Betty, who had already rushed inside, called out: “Here’s the old settle! I know it from its pictures!”
Sure enough, there it was, close beside the great fireplace,—we hope just where it has always been ever since Anne Hathaway and Shakespeare sat there together.
“But, Mother, is that really the same bench, and did Anne truly live here?” questioned the all too matter-of-fact Barbara.
“My dear daughter,” began Mrs. Pitt, feigning great severity; “banish that thought immediately! Just for one little hour we are going to know that Anne did live here,—that Will said ‘Will you?’ and Anne said ‘I will,’ right on this very bench. I quite refuse to listen to any doubts on the subject for to-day! You write our names in the book, please, Philip. I’m going to rest myself here in Anne’s rocking-chair!”