f-amused and wholly
mystified.

"Good!" she retorted, brightly. "'As You Like It' shall you name the
piece, that henceforth this our conversation you may bear in mind."

Smiling, he took up his papers and wrote across the top of one of them
"As You Like It" in large characters.

"Now write as I shall bid you," Phoebe said. "Pray be seated, good my
pupil, come."

Then, seated there by Phoebe's side, the poet committed to paper the
whole of Jacques's speech on "The Seven Ages," just as Phoebe spoke it
from her memory of the Shakespeare club at home.

When he ceased scribbling, he leaned forward with elbows on his knees
and ran his eyes slowly and wonderingly over each line in turn,
whispering the words destined to become so famous. Phoebe leaned a
little away from her companion, resting one hand on the bench, while she
watched his face with a smile that slowly melted to the mood of dreamy
meditation. They sat thus alone in silence for some time, so still that
a wren, alighting on the path, hopped pecking among the stones at their
very feet.

At length the poet, without other change in position, turned his head
and looked searchingly and seriously into the young girl's eyes. What
amazing quality was it that stamped its impress upon the maiden's
face--a something he had never seen or dreamed of? Even a Shakespeare
could give no name to that spirit of the future out of which she had
come.

"Is it then true?" he said, in an undertone. "Doth the muse live? Not a
mere prompting inward sense, but in bodily semblance visiting the poet's
eye? Or art thou a creature of Fancy's colors blended, feigning
reality?"

Never before had the glamour of her situation so penetrated her to whom
these words were addressed. She was choked by an irrepressible sob that
was half a laugh, and a film of moisture obscured her vision. With a
sudden movement, she seized the poet's hand and pressed it to her lips.
Then, half-ashamed, she rose and turned away to toy with the foliage of
a shrub that stood beside the path.

"Nay, then!" Shakespeare cried, with something like relief in his voice,
"you are no insubstantial spirit, damsel. Yet would I fain more clearly
comprehend thee!"

There was a minute's pause ere Phoebe turned toward the speaker, that
spirit of mischief dancing again in her eyes and on her lips.

"I am Mary Burton, of Burton Hall," she said.

"Oh!" he exclaimed. And then again: "Oh!" with much of understanding and
somethi