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: "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.