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:
"Piping Pebworth, dancing Marston,
Haunted Hillborough, hungry Grafton,
Dodging Exhall, Papist Wixford,
Beggarly Broom and drunken Bidford."
Bidford is not drunken now; it is only sleepy: a long steep street, with, at the top, the church and a beautiful old house, now cottages, once the Falcon Inn, where Shakespeare used to drink, and where the chair came from that they had seen at the birthplace yesterday; and at the foot the Swan Inn and the old bridge.
Bidford is built very like a wateringplace—that is to say, it is all on one side of the river. The water to-day looked very tempting, especially as a great number of boats were lying on it waiting to be hired; but Robert sternly ordered his party onwards.
Has it ever occurred to you that in the life of every policeman there is one day when he wears his majestic uniform in public for the first time? It must, of course, be so. No matter how many times he may have put it on at home privately, to get used to it, the day must at last come when he has to walk forth into the streets, and in the eyes of those who have known him ever since he was a boy, or even a baby, changed from a man like themselves to an important and rather dreadful guardian of the peace. If he is a simple fellow, the great day may leave him very much as he was; but if he is at all given to conceit, it may make him worse.
Now it happened that this Tuesday on which the Slowcoaches were on their way from Stratford to Evesham was the very day on which Benjamin Roper was beginning his duties as a member of the Warwickshire constabulary. His beat in the morning lay between Bidford and Salford Priors, and he was standing beside the road, on the top of the little hill called Marriage Hill—just before you cross the River Arrow and come to Salford Priors station—at the very moment that Moses, after painfully dragging the Slowcoach up the same eminence, had reached the summit.
At the door of the caravan were to be seen Mary, Hester, and Gregory, whose turn it was to ride; and P.C. Roper stared in astonishment at faces so unlike the swarthy, tanned children he was expecting.
He stared so long indeed—everything being a little strange to him that day—that Jack, who, with Horace, was walking just behind, politely but with every intention of being severe, inquired: "Do you think you'll know us next time?"
P.C. Roper said nothing, but frowned at Jack with an expression so full of dignity, reprimand, and suspicion that Jack could not help laughing.
"Oh, I say," he said, "don't be cross. Mayn't we go about in a caravan if we want to? No one else has objected."
"No," Horace added, "the King said nothing as we came through London, and the Mayor of Stratford asked us to tea."
Kink laughed at this—much too loudly—and the young policeman realized that he had been foolish. Instead, however, of laughing, too, he became more important and angry, and suddenly he thought of a means of retaliation.
Pulling out a notebook and pencil, he said: "I want to see your license for this caravan." He said this not because he really wanted to see it, but because it suggested itself as a good demand and one which would make the children realize that he was a man of authority not to be trifled with. But when he saw the blank which fell on their faces, and even on Kink's too, he knew that he had stumbled by chance on an excellent weapon, and he resolved to make the most of it.
"Come," he said, "the license. I'm waiting to see it."
Janet and Robert, who had by this time come up, were told of the difficulty.
"License?" said Robert. "What license?"
"All carriages must have licenses," said the policeman, "and all caravans have to produce theirs when called for, because they're always moving about."
The children gathered round Kink to discuss it. Kink said that it was all Greek to him. He supposed, of course, that caravans had to have licenses, but he'd never heard of demands for them in the highroad. "But do be civil to him, Master Robert," he implored. "You never get any good out of cheeking the police."
"Well," said Robert to the constable, "this caravan was given to us. The license for it was got, I feel sure, by the person who gave it to us."
"Who was that person?" P.C. Roper asked, with his pencil ready to write down the name.
Here was a poser. Who indeed? The children had discussed X. often enough, but were no nearer to discovering him.
"I don't know," Robert was forced to say.
P.C. Roper smiled a deadly smile. "Oho!" he said. "You don't know who gave you the caravan! Things are looking up. Caravans drop from the sky, do they? A very thin story indeed. I'll trouble you to come with me, all of you, and see my inspector."
P.C. Roper was quite happy now. He had not only filled the impertinent children with fear, but he had done a smart thing on his very first day as constable. He drew himself up, and returned the notebook to his pocket.
"Your inspector?" Robert said. "Where does he live?"
"Well," said P.C. Roper, "he lives at Bidford, but he's at Stratford to-day, at the Police Court, and he won't be back till the evening."
"We can't wait till evening," Robert said. "It would throw out all our plans."
"Plans!" exclaimed P.C. Roper. "Plans indeed! Aren't you suspicious-looking persons in the possession of an unlicensed caravan, and unable to give any reasonable account of how you got it? Your plans can wait."
"Please give us a little time to discuss it," Janet said, and they all surrounded Kink once more.
"Of course it's absurd," Jack said; "but what an awful pity you don't know who X. is! That's what makes the trouble. It looks so silly, too."
"Do you really think that caravans have to show licenses?" Janet asked Kink.
"I never thought about it," Kink said, "but it sounds reasonable in a way. Gipsies, you know. If Master Campbell hadn't said that about the King and the Mayor I shouldn't have laughed, and then the copper wouldn't have lost his wool, and we should be all right."
"Never mind about that," said Janet. "We can't bother about what is done. The thing is, what we are to do. How funny of Mr. Lenox not to have thought about the license!—he thought of everything else."
"Yes, and X. too," said Robert. "But it's just terrible to have to go back and wait all day for the inspector. We are due at Evesham this afternoon."
"Couldn't we overpower him," Horace said, "and bind him, and leave him in the ditch?"
"Yes," said Hester, "or ask him to have a glass of milk, and drug it?"
"Don't be absurd," said Robert. "This is serious. All right," he called out to P.C. Roper, who was getting anxious, "we're just coming."
Then Janet had a happy thought. "I say," she exclaimed, "where is that envelope that Uncle Christopher gave us? He said we were to open it if we got into a real mess. Well, now's the time."
"It's in the safe," said Robert, and he dashed into the caravan and brought it out.
Janet opened it and read it slowly. Then she smiled a radiant smile, and, advancing to the constable, handed him a paper.
"Here is the license," she said; "you will find our name and address on it. Now, perhaps, we may go on."
P.C. Roper read the license very carefully, frowned, and handed it back.
"It would save a lot of trouble," he said, "if you would produce such things directly you were asked for them."
"But we didn't know we'd got it," Janet said.
P.C. Roper pressed his hand to his forehead. "I don't know where I am," he muttered.
"They've got a caravan, and they don't know who gave it to them; and they've got envelopes, and they don't know what's in them. Does your mother know you're out?" he added as a farewell shot.
The Slowcoaches could not help it; they gave him three cheers, and then three more for Uncle Christopher.
"Well," said Janet, "that's all right, but it's lucky he did not see Uncle Christopher's letter. Listen:
DEAR CHILDREN,
"It has suddenly occurred to me that some ass of a policeman may want
to see your license, and I have therefore procured one for you. If you
get into any kind of trouble, be sure to give my name and address, and
telegraph for me.
"Your affectionate Uncle,
CHRIS.
"It would have been better," Kink said, "if your uncle had handed you the license right away—not made a mystery of it."
"Oh, no," said Hester.
As it happened, they were destined not to reach Evesham that day, for at Abbots Salford Moses cast a shoe, and that meant the blacksmith and delay. When the accident was discovered, and the children were surrounding Moses and helping Kink in his examination of the hoof, a farmer who was walking by stopped and joined them. He asked the trouble, and offered them his advice.
"You put your caravan in my yard there," he said, pointing to a beautiful gateway just ahead, "and you make yourselves comfortable there while the horse is being shod. I'll show you the house if you like," he added; "it's very old, and haunted too, and there's a grand boatingplace at the weir just across the meadows. Don't worry about the horse or anything. If you go to bed early and get up early, it will come to the same thing as if you had gone right on."
Everyone except Robert, who liked to see his time-tables obeyed, and perhaps Gregory, who had been deprived for some days of his office of asking leave for a camping-ground, and was now balked again, was glad of the mischance that brought camp so early, and Hester was wild with pleasure, for Salford Hall is an old mansion of grey stone, built three hundred years ago, and now mysterious and, except for a few rooms, desolate. It has also an old garden and a fish-pond, and a little Roman Catholic chapel whose altar-candles have been alight for centuries.
The farmer was very kind. He gave the children leave to go anywhere and everywhere, but they must not, he said, run or jump, because the floors were not strong enough. He led them from room to room, to the dancing-gallery in the roof.
There was a very old bagatelle-table in one room, all moth-eaten, and a few old pictures still on the walls—a knight and his lady with Elizabethan ruffs, and a portrait of a greyhound. From a top window the farmer showed them Evesham's bell-tower.
But the most exciting moment was when each of them in turn was allowed to hide in the priest's hiding-hole. This was a very ingenious cupboard behind a row of shelves intended to have books or china on them, which swung back when you loosened a catch. Hester crouched here and shut her eyes, and firmly believed that the Protestants were after her.
In her next letter she implored her mother to take the Hall, and live there in the summer. "I am sure," she wrote, "it would be very cheap, because it is so shabby and is crumbling away in many places. I would gladly live in the priest's hiding-hole always. Please think about it seriously."
Afterwards the farmer showed them the way down to the weir, over the railway, and advised them to have the caravan taken down there, and sleep there that night near the rushing water.
"You couldn't have done it two months ago," he said.
"Why not?" Robert asked.
"Guess why," said the farmer.
And will you believe it, none of them could guess.
"Because it was flooded," said the farmer. "In winter it's often just a great lake, from the railway at the foot of our garden right to the Marlcliff Hills."
And so Moses (with a beautiful new shoe) was put into the shafts again, and they went gently over the soft green meadows to the weir, and there they had their supper, and explored the mill and the shaggy wood overhanging it, and rowed a little in a very safe boat, and stood on the little bridges, and watched the rushing water, and then walked slowly beside the still stream higher up as the light began to fade, and surprised the water-rats feeding or gossiping on the banks—none of which things could they have done had Moses had the poor sense to retain his near fore-shoe.
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