HOW UNCLE MO WAS JUST TOO LATE. THE SHINY LADY. THE TURN THE MAN HAD GIVEN AUNT M'RIAR, AND HER APOLOGIES. DOLLY'S INTENDED HOSPITALITY TO MRS. PRICHARD ON HER RETURN. DOLLY'S DOLLY'S NEW NAME. AN ARRANGEMENT, COMMITTING NEITHER PARTY. GUINEVERE, LANCELOT, AND THE CAKE. MRS. PRICHARD INSANE?—THE IDEA! HOW GWEN READ THE LETTER ALL BUT THE POSTSCRIPT. NOTHING FOR IT BUT TO TELL! BUT HOW? FUN, TELLING THE CHILDREN. ANOTHER RECHRISTENING OF DOLLY. GWEN'S LAST EXIT FROM MRS. PRICHARD'S APARTMENTS. JOAN OF ARC'S SWORD'S SOUL. THE POSTSCRIPT. WIDOW THRALE'S DOG. WHAT THE CONVICT HAD SAID. HOW LONG DOES BONA-FIDE OMNIPOTENCE TAKE OVER A JOB?

Gwen, leaving her convoy to wait for her in the antechamber of Sapps Court, and approach No. 7 alone, heard as she knocked at the door an altercation within; Aunt M'riar's voice and a strange one, with terror in the former and threat in the latter. Had all sounded peaceful, she might have held back, to allow the interview to terminate. But catching the sound of fear in the woman's voice, and having none in her own composition, she immediately delivered a double-knock of the most unflinching sort, and followed it by pushing open the door.

She could hear Dave above, at the top window, recognising her as "The Lady." As she entered, a man who was coming out flinched before her meanly for a moment, then brushed past brutally. Aunt M'riar's face was visible where she stood back near the staircase; it was white with terror. She gasped out:—"Let him go; I'll come directly!" and ran upstairs. Gwen heard her call to the children, more collectedly, to come down, as the lady was there, and then apparently retreat into her room, shutting the door. Thereon the children came rushing down, and before she could get attention to her inquiry as to who that hideous man was, Uncle Mo had pushed the door open. He had not asked that pill-box to explain itself, but had gone straight on to No. 7. Dave met him on the threshold, in a tempest of excitement, exclaiming: —"Oy say, Uncle Mo!—the lady's here. The shoyny one. And oy say, Uncle Mo, the Man's been." The last words were in a tone to themselves, quite unlike what came before. It was as though Dave had said:—"The millennium has come, but the crops are spoiled." He added:—"Oy saw the Man, out of the top window, going away."

Uncle Mo let the millennium stand over. "Which man, old Peppermint Drops?" said he, improvising a name to express an aroma he had detected in his nephew, when he stooped to make sure he was getting his last words right.

"Whoy, the Man," Dave continued, in an undertone that might have related to the Man with the Iron Mask, "the Man me and Micky we sore in Hoyde Park, and said he was a-going to rip Micky up, and Micky he said he should call the Police-Orficers, and the gentleman said...."

"That'll do prime!" said Uncle Mo. For Dave's torrent of identification was superfluous. "I would have laid a guinea I knew his game," added he to himself. Then to Gwen, inside the house with Dolly on her knee:—"You'll excuse me, miss, my lady, these young customers they do insert theirselves—it's none so easy to find a way round 'em, as I say to M'riar.... M'riar gone out?" For it was a surprise to find the children alone entertaining company—and such company!

"There, Dolly, you hear?" said Gwen. "You're not to insert yourself between me and your uncle. Suppose we sit quiet for five minutes!" Dolly subsided. "How do you do, Mr. Wardle!... No, Aunt Maria isn't here, and I'm afraid that man coming worried her. Dave's man.... Oh yes—I saw him. He came out as I came in, three minutes ago. What is the man? Didn't I hear Dave telling how Micky said he should give him to the Police? I wish Micky had, and the Police had found out who he's murdered. Because he's murdered somebody, that man! I saw it in his eyes."

"He's a bad character," said Mo. "If he don't get locked up, it won't be any fault of mine. On'y that'll be after I've squared a little account I have against him—private affair of my own. If you'll excuse me half a minute, I'll go up and see what's got M'riar." But Uncle Mo was stopped at the stair-foot by the reappearance of Aunt M'riar at the stair-top. As they met halfway up, both paused, and Gwen heard what it was easy to guess was Aunt M'riar's tale of "the Man's" visit, and Uncle Mo's indignation. They must have conversed thus in earnest undertones for full five minutes, before Aunt M'riar said audibly:—"Now we mustn't keep the lady waiting no longer, Mo"; and both returned, making profuse apologies. The interval of their absence had been successfully and profitably filled in by an account of how Mrs. Picture had been taken to see Jones's Bull, with a rough sketch of the Bull's demeanour in her company.

Aunt M'riar made amends to the best of her abilities for her desertion. Perhaps the young lady knew what she meant when she said she had been giv' rather a turn? The young lady did indeed. Aunt M'riar hoped she had not been alarmed by her exit. Nor by the person who had gone out? No—Gwen's nerves had survived both, though certainly the person wasn't a beauty. She went on to hope that the effects of the turn he had given Aunt M'riar would not be permanent. These being pooh-poohed by both Uncle Mo and Aunt M'riar, became negligible and lapsed.

"The children came running down directly after you went, Aunt Maria," said Gwen. "So I can assure you I didn't lose my temper at being left alone. I wasn't alone two minutes!" Then she gave, in reply to a general inquiry after the fever patient, inaugurated by Dave with:—"Oy say, how's Sister Nora?"—the very favourable report she had just received from Dr. Dalrymple.

Then Mrs. Prichard was rushed into the conversation by a sudden inexplicable statement of Dolly's. "When Mrs. Spicture comes back," said she, "Granny Marrowbone is to pour out Mrs. Spicture's tea. And real Cake. And stoast cut in sloyces wiv real butter."

"Don't get excited, Dolly dear," said Gwen, protesting against the amount of leg-action that accompanied this ukase. "Tell us again! Why is Granny Marrable to make tea? Granny Marrable's at her house in the country. She's not coming here with Mrs. Spicture."

"There, now, Dolly!" said Aunt M'riar. "Why don't you tell clear, a bit at a time, and get yourself understood? Granny Marrowbone's the new name, my lady, she's christened her doll, Dolly. So she should be known apart, Dolly being, as you might say, Dolly herself. Because her uncle he pointed out to her, 'Dolly,' he said, 'you're in for thinkin' out some new name for this here baby of yours, to say which is which. Or 'us you'll get that mixed up, nobody'll know!'"

"I put my oar in," said Uncle Mo, "for to avoid what they call coarmplications nowadays." He never lost an opportunity of hinting at the fallings off of the Age. "So she and Dave they turns to and thinks one out. I should have felt more like Sally or Sooky or Martilda myself. Or Queen Wictoria." The last was a gracious concession to Her Majesty; who, in the eyes of Uncle Mo, had recently come to the throne.

"No!" said Dolly firmly. "Gwanny Mawwowbone!" This was very articulately delivered, the previous, or slipshod, pronunciation having been more nearly Granny Mallowbone.

"Certainly!" said Gwen, assenting. "Dolly's dolly Dolly shall be Granny Marrowbone. Only it makes Dolly out rather old."

Dolly seemed to take exception to this. "I was four on my birfday," said she. "I shan't be five not till my next birfday, such a long, long, long, long time."

"And you'll stop four till you're five," said Gwen. "Won't you, Dolly dear? What very blue eyes the little person has!" They were fixed on the speaker with all the solemnity the contemplation of a geological period of Time inspires. The little person nodded gravely—about the Time, not about her eyes—and said:—"Ass!"

Dave thrust himself forward as an interpreter of Dolly's secret wishes, saying, to the astonishment of his aunt and uncle:—"Dorly wants to take her upstairs to show her where the tea's to be set out when Mrs. Spicture comes back."

Remonstrance was absolutely necessary, but what form could it take? Aunt M'riar was forced back on her usual resource, her lack of previous experience of a similar enormity:—"Well, I'm sure, a big boy like you to call a lady her! I never did, in all my born days!" Uncle Mo meanly threw the responsibility of the terms of an absolutely necessary amendment on the culprit himself, saying:—"You're a nice young monkey! Where's your manners? Is that what they larn you to say at school? What's a lady's name when you speak to her?" He had no one but himself to thank for the consequences. Dave, who, jointly with Dolly, was just then on the most intimate footing with the young lady, responded point-blank:—"Well—Gwen, then! She said so. Sister Gwen."

Her young ladyship's laugh rang out with such musical cordiality that the two horror-stricken faces relaxed, and Uncle Mo's got so far as the beginning of a smile. "It's all quite right," said Gwen. "I told Dave I was Gwen just this minute when you were upstairs. He's made it 'sister'—so we shan't be compromised, either of us." Whereupon Dave, quite in the dark, assented from sheer courtesy.

Aunt M'riar seemed to think it a reasonable arrangement, and Uncle Mo, with a twinkle in his eye, said:—"It's better than hollerin' out 'she' and 'her,' like a porter at a railway-station."

But her ladyship had not come solely to have a symposium with Dave and Dolly. So she suggested that both should go upstairs and rehearse the slaughter of the fatted calf; that is to say, distribute the apparatus of the banquet that was to welcome Mrs. Picture back. Dave demurred at first, on the score of his maturity, but gave way when an appeal was made to some equivalent of patriotism whose existence was taken for granted; and consented, as it were, to act on the Committee.

"Now, don't you come running down to say it's ready, not till I give leave," said Aunt M'riar, having misgivings that the apparatus might not be sufficiently—suppose we affect a knowledge of Horace, and say "Persian"—to keep the Committee employed.

"They'll be quiet enough for a bit," said Uncle Mo. Who showed insight by adding:—"They won't agree about where the things are to be put, nor what's to be the cake." For a proxy had to be found, to represent the cake. Even so Lancelot stood at the altar with Guinevere, as Arthur's understudy for the part of bridegroom.

"Do please now all sit down and be comfortable," said Gwen, as soon as tranquillity reigned. "Because I want to talk a great deal.... Yes—about Mrs. Prichard. I really should be comfortabler if you sat down.... Well—Mr. Wardle can sit on the table if he likes." So that compromise was made, and Gwen got to business. "I really hardly know how to begin telling you," she said. "What has happened is so very odd.... Oh no—I have seen to that. The woman she is with will take every care of her.... You know—Widow Thrale, Dave's Granny's daughter, who had charge of Dave—Strides Cottage, of course! I'm sure she'll be all right as far as that goes. But the whole thing is so odd.... Stop a minute!—perhaps the best way would be for me to read you Mrs. Thrale's letter that she has written me. She must be very nice." This throwing of the burden of disclosure on her correspondent seemed to Gwen to be on the line of least resistance. She was feeling bewildered already as to how on earth the two old sisters could be revealed to one another, and her mind was casting about for any and every guidance from any quarter that could lead her to the revelation naturally. There was no quarter but Sapps Court. So try it, at least!

She read straight on without interruption, except for expressions of approval or concurrence from her hearers when they heard the writer's declaration of how impressionnÉe she had been by the old lady, until she came to the first reference to the gist of the letter, her mental soundness. Then both broke into protest. "Delusions!" they exclaimed at once. Old Mrs. Prichard subject to delusions? Not she! Never was a saner woman, of her years, than old Mrs. Prichard!

"I only wish," said Uncle Mo, "that I may never be no madder than Goody Prichard. Why, it's enough to convince you she's in her senses only to hear her say good-arternoon!" This meant that Uncle Mo's visits upstairs had always been late in the day, and that her greeting to him would have impressed him with her sanity, had it ever been called in question.

"On'y fancy!" said Aunt M'riar indignantly. "To say Mrs. Prichard's deluded, and her living upstairs with Mrs. Burr this three years past, and Skillicks for more than that, afore ever she come here!" This only wanted the addition that Mrs. Burr had seen no sign of insanity in all these years, to be logical and intelligible.

Gwen found no fault, because she saw what was meant. But there was need for a caution. "You won't say anything of this till I tell you," said she. "Not even to Mrs. Burr. It would only make her uncomfortable." For why should all the old lady's belongings be put on the alert to discover flaws in her understanding? Uncle Mo and Aunt M'riar gave the pledge asked for, and Gwen went on reading. They just recognised the water-mill as an acquaintance of last year—not as a subject of frequent conversation with Dave. Aunt M'riar seemed greatly impressed with the old lady's excursion out of bed to get at the mill-model, especially at its having occurred before six in the morning. Also by the dog.

Uncle Mo was more practically observant. When the reading came to the two mills in Essex, he turned to Aunt M'riar, saying:—"She said summat about Essex—you told me." Aunt M'riar said:—"Well, now, I couldn't say!" in the true manner of a disappointing witness. But when, some sentences later, the reference came to the two little girl twins, Uncle Mo suddenly broke in with:—"Hullo!... Never mind!—go on"; as apologizing for his interruption. Later still, unable to constrain himself any longer:—"Didn't—you—tell—me, M'riar, that Mrs. P. she told you her father lived at Darenth in Essex?"

"No, Mo, that's not the name. Durrant was the name she said." Aunt M'riar was straining at a gnat. However, solemn bigwigs have done that before now.

"Nigh enough for most folks," said Uncle Mo. "Just you think a bit and see what she said her father's name was."

"She never said his name, Mo. She never said a single name to me, not that I can call to mind, not except it was Durrant."

"Very well, then, M'riar! Now I come to my point. Didn't—you—tell—me—a'most the very first time you did anything—didn't you tell me Mrs. P. she said she was a twin. And Dave he made enquiries."

"She was a twin."

"I'm stumped," said Uncle Mo. "I was always groggy over the guessing of co-nundrums. Now, miss—my lady—what does your ladyship make of it?"

"Let me read to the end," said Gwen. "It's not very long now. Then I'll tell you." She read on and finished the letter, all but the postscript. She was saying to herself:—"If I stick so over telling these good people now, what will it be when the crisis comes?" It would be good practice, anyhow, to drive it home to Aunt M'riar. When she had quite finished what she meant to read, she went straight on, as she had promised, ignoring obstacles:—"The explanation is that Mrs. Marrable and Mrs. Prichard are twin sisters, who parted fifty years ago. About five years later Mrs. Prichard was deceived by a forged letter, telling her that her sister was drowned. My father and I found it among her papers, and read it. This Mrs. Thrale who writes to me is her own daughter, whom she left in England nearly fifty years since—a baby!... And now she thinks her mother mad—her own mother!... Oh dear!—how will they ever know? Who will tell them?"

A low whistle and a gasp respectively were all that Uncle Mo and Aunt M'riar were good for. A reissue of the gasp might have become "Merciful Gracious!" or some equivalent, if Uncle Mo had not nipped it in the bud, thereby to provide a fulcrum for his own speech. "'Arf a minute, M'riar! Your turn next. I want to be clear, miss—my lady—that I've got the record ack-rate. These here two ladies have been twins all their lives, unbeknown...." Uncle Mo was so bewildered that this amount of confusion was excusable.

Gwen took his meaning, instead of criticizing his form. "Not all their lives," she said. "Fifty years ago they were thirty, and it's all happened since then." She went over the ground again, not letting her hearers off even the most incredible of the facts. She was surprised and relieved to find that they seemed able to receive them, only noticing that they appeared to lean on her superior judgment. They were dumfoundered, of course; but they could believe, with such a helper for their unbelief. Were not the deep-rooted faiths of maturity, once, the child's readiness to believe its parents infallible, and would not any other indoctrination have held as firmly? Even so the rather childish minds of Dave's guardians made no question of the credibility of the tale, coming as it did from such an informant—one without a shadow of interest in the fabrication of it.

Aunt M'riar made no attempt at anything beyond mere exclamation; until, after the second detailed review of the facts, Gwen was taken aback by her saying suddenly:—"Won't it be a'most cruel, when you come to think of it?..."

"Won't what be cruel, Aunt M'riar?"

"For to tell 'em. Two such very elderly parties, and all the time gone by! I say, let the rest go! I should think twice about it. But it ain't for me to say." She seemed to have a sudden inspiration towards decision of opinion, a thing rare with her. It was due, no doubt, to her own recent experience of an unwelcome resurrection from the Past.

"'Tain't any consarn of ours to choose, M'riar. Just you go over to their side o' the hedge for a minute. Suppose you was Goody Prichard, and Goody Prichard was you!"

"Well! Suppose!"

"Which would you like? Her to bottle up, or tell?" Aunt M'riar wavered. A momentary hope of Gwen's, that perhaps Aunt M'riar's way out of the difficulty might hold good, died at its birth, killed by Uncle Mo's question.

Which would Gwen have liked, herself, in Mrs. Prichard's place? Aunt M'riar was evidently looking to her for an answer.

"I'm afraid there's no help for it, Aunt Maria," said she. "She must be told. But don't be afraid I shall leave the telling to you. I shall go back and tell her myself in a day or two."

"Will she come back here?" This question raised a new doubt. Would either of the two old twins care to leave the other, after that formidable disclosure had been achieved? It was looking too far ahead. Gwen felt that the evil of the hour was sufficient for the day, or indeed the next three weeks for that matter, and evaded the question with an answer to that effect.

Then, as no more was to be gained by talking, seeing that she could not give all her proofs in detail, she suggested that she should go up to Mrs. Prichard's room to say good-bye to Dave and Dolly. Promises could not be ignored between honourable people. Uncle Mo and Aunt M'riar quite concurred. "But," said they, almost in the same breath, "are the children to know?"

Gwen had not considered the point. "No—yes—no!" she said, and then revoked. "Really, though, I don't know, after all, why they shouldn't! What harm can it do?"

What harm indeed? Mo and M'riar looked the question at each other, and neither looked a negative reply. Very good, then! Dave and Dolly were to know, but who was to tell?

Gwen considered again. Then it flashed across her mind that the disclosure of the relationship of his two Grannies could have no distressing effect on Dave. Time and Change and Death are only names, to a chick not eight years old, and nothing need be told of the means by which the sisters' lives had been cut apart. As for Dolly, she would either weep or laugh at a piece of news, according to the suggestions of her informant. Passionless narrative would leave her unaffected either way. Told as good news, this would be accepted as good, and it would be a pleasure to tell it to those babies.

"I'll tell them myself," said she. "Don't you come up. Is Mrs. Burr there?" No—Mrs. Burr was at Mrs. Ragstroar's, attending to a little job for her. Gwen vanished up the stairs, and her welcome was audible below.

She did not mince matters, and the two young folks were soon crowing with delight at her statement, made with equanimity, that she knew that Granny Marrowbone was really old Mrs. Picture's sister. She saw no reason for making the announcement thrilling. It was enough to say that each of them had been told wicked lies about the other, and been deceived by bad people, such as there was every reason to hope were not to be found in Sapps Court, or the neighbourhood. "And each of them," she added, "thought the other was dead and buried, a long time ago!" Inexplicably, she felt it easier to say dead and buried, than merely dead.

Dolly, having been recently in collision with Time, saw her way to profitable comparison. "A long, long, long time, like my birfday!" she said, suggestively but unstructurally.

"Heaps longer," said Gwen. "Heaps and heaps!" Dolly was impressed, almost cowed. She could not be even with these Æons and eras and epochs, at her time of life.

Dave burst into a shout of unrestrained glee at the discovery that his London and country Grannies were sisters. "Oy shall wroyte to say me and Dolly are glad. Ever such long letters to bofe." A moment later his face had clouded over. "Oy say!" said he, "will they be glad or sorry?"

"Glad," said Gwen venturesomely. "Why should they be sorry? You must write them very, very long letters." The mine would be sprung, she thought, before even a short letter was finished. But it was as well to be on the safe side.

Dave was feeling the germination in his mind of hitherto unexperienced thoughts about Death and Time, and he remained speechless. He shook his head with closed lips and puzzled blue eyes fixed on his questioner. She saw a little way into his mind as he looked up at her, and pinched his cheek slightly, for sympathy, with the hand that was round his neck, but said nothing. Children are so funny!

"I fink," said Dolly, "old Mrs. Spicture shall bring old Granny Marrowbone back wiv her when she comes back and sets in her harm-chair wiv scushions, and Mrs. Burr cuts the reel cake, wiv splums, in sloyces, in big sloyces and little sloyces, and Mrs. Burr pawses milluck in my little jug, and Mrs. Burr pawses tea in my little pot—ass, hot tea!—and ven Doyvy shall cally round the scups and sources, but me to paw it out"—this clause was merely to assert the supremacy of Woman in household matters—"and ven all ve persons to help veirself to shoogy.... etc., etc. Which might have run on musically for ever, but that a difficulty arose about the names of the guests and their entertainer. It was most unfortunate that the latter should have been rechristened lately after one of the former. Her owner interpreted her to express readiness to accept another name, and that of Gweng was selected, as a compliment to the visitor.

Then it really became time for that young lady to depart. Think of that doctor's pill-box waiting all this while round the corner! So she ended what she did not suspect was her last look at old Mrs. Picture's apartment, with the fire's last spasmodic flicker helping the gas-lamp below in the Court to show Dolly, unable to tear herself away from the glorious array of preparation on the floor. There it stood, just under the empty chair with cushions, still waiting—waiting for its occupant to come again; and meanwhile a Godsend to the cat, who resumed her place the moment the intruder rose from it, with an implication that her forbearance had been great indeed to endure exclusion for so long. There was no more misgiving on the face of that little maid, putting the fiftieth touch on the perfection of her tea-cup arrangements, that her ideal entertainment would never compass realisation, than there was on the faces of the Royal Pair in their robes and decorations, gazing firmly across at Joan of Arc and St. George, in plaster, but done over bronze so you couldn't tell; precious possessions of Mrs. Burr, who was always inquiring what it would cost to repair Joan's sword—which had disintegrated and laid bare the wire in its soul—and never getting an estimate. Nor on the face of Mrs. Burr herself, coming upstairs from her job out at Mrs. Ragstroar's, and beaming—prosaically, but still beaming—on the young lady that had come to see her at the Hospital.

"Oh, I remember, by-the-by," said that young lady, three minutes later, having really said adieu all round to the family; including Dolly, who had suddenly awakened to the position, and overtaken her at the foot of the stairs. "I remember there was something else I wanted to ask you, Aunt Maria. Did Mrs. Prichard ever talk to you about her son?"

Was it wonderful that Aunt M'riar should start and flinch from speech, and that Uncle Mo should look preoccupied about everything outside the conversation? Can you imagine the sort of feeling an intensely truthful person like Aunt M'riar would have under such circumstances? How could she, without feeling like duplicity itself, talk about this son as though he were unknown to her, when his foul presence still hung about the room he had quitted less than an hour since? That fact, and that she had seen him, then and there, face to face with her beautiful questioner, weighed heavier on her at that moment than her own terrible relation to him, a discarded wife oppressed by an uncancelled marriage.

She had got to answer that question. "Mrs. Prichard has a son," she said. "But he's no good." This came with a jerk—perhaps with a weak hope that it might eject him from the conversation.

"She hasn't set eyes on him, didn't she say, for years past?" said old Mo, seeing that M'riar wanted help. Also with a hope of eliminating the convict. "Didn't even know whether he was living or dead, did she?"

The reply, after consideration, was:—"No-o! She said that."

And then Gwen looked from one to the other. "Oh-h!" said she. "Then probably the man was her son.... Look here! I must read you the postscript I left out." She reopened Mrs. Thrale's letter, and read that the writer's mother had been much upset by a man who laid claim to being Mrs. Prichard's son. As her eyes were on the letter, she did not see the glance of reciprocal intelligence that passed between her two listeners. But she looked up after the last word of the postscript in time to see the effect of the dog at Strides Cottage. Even as her father had been influenced, so was Uncle Mo. He appeared to breathe freer for that dog. It struck Gwen that Aunt M'riar seemed a little unenquiring and uncommunicative about this son of Mrs. Prichard's, considering all the circumstances.

When Gwen had departed, Aunt M'riar, seeing perhaps interrogation in Mo's eyes, stopped it by saying:—"Don't you ask me no more questions, not till these children are clear off to bed. I'll tell after supper." And then, just that moment, Mr. Alibone looked in, and was greatly impressed by Dave and Dolly's dramatic account of their visitor. "I've seen her, don't you know?" he said. "When you was put about to get that lock open t'other day. She's one among a million. If I was a blooming young Marquish, I should just knock at her door till she had me moved on. That's what, Mo. So might you, old man." To which Uncle Mo replied:—"They've stood us over too long, Jerry. If they don't look alive, they won't get a chance to make either of us a Marquish. I expect they're just marking time." Which Dave listened to with silent, large-eyed gravity. Some time after he expressed curiosity about the prospects of these Marquisates, and made inquiry touching the relation "marking time" had to them. Uncle Mo responded that it wouldn't be so very long now, and described the ceremonies that would accompany it—something like Lord Mayor's Show, with a flavour of Guy Fawkes Day.

However, Dave and Dolly went to bed this evening without even that inaccurate enlightenment. And presently Mr. Alibone, detecting his friend's meaning when he said he was deadly sleepy somehow to-night, took his leave and went away to finish his last pipe at The Sun.

And then Mo and M'riar were left to resume the day, and make out its meaning. "How long had the feller been here?" he asked, in order to begin somewhere.

Aunt M'riar took the question too much to heart, and embarked on an intensely accurate answer. "I couldn't say not to a minute," she said. "But if you was to put it at ten minutes, I'd have felt it safer at seven. The nearer seven the better, I should say."

"Anyhow—not a twelvemonth!" said Mo. "And there he was skearing you out of your wits, when the lady came in and di-verted of him off. Where was the two young scaramouches all the while?"

"Them I'd sent upstairs when I see who it was outside. Dave he never see him, not to look at!"

"He see him out of the top window, and knew him again. What had the beggar got to say for hisself?" This was the gist of the matter, and Uncle Mo settled down to hear it.

"He'd been to look after his mother in the country, at the place I told him—and the more fool me for telling—and he thought he spotted her, but it was some other old woman, and while he was talking to her, there to be sure and if he didn't see a police-officer after him!"

"What did he do on that?"

"Oh, he run for it, and was all but took. But he got away to the railway, and the officer followed him. And when he saw him coming up, he jumped in the wrong train, that was just starting, and got carried to Manchester. And he got back to London by the night train."

"And then he come on here, and found I was in the parlour—round at Joe Jeffcoat's. He thought he see his way to another half-a-sovereign out of you, M'riar, and that's what he come for. He thought I was safe for just the du-ration of a pipe or two."

"What brought you back, Mo?"

"Well, ye see, I heard his ugly voice out in the front bar, askin' for me. And I only thought he was a sporting c'rackter come to see what the old scrapper looked like in his old age. Then I couldn't think for a minute or two because of old Billy's clapper going, but when I did, his face came back to me atop of his voice. More by token when he never showed up! Ye see?" Aunt M'riar nodded an exact understanding of what had happened. "And then I take it he come sneaking down here to see for some cash, if he could get it. He'll come again, old girl, he'll come again! And Simeon Rowe shall put on a man in plain clothes, to watch for him when I'm away."

"Oh, Mo, don'tee say that! It was only his make-believe to frighten me. Anyone could tell that only to see him flourishin' out his knife."

"Hay—what's that?—his knife? You never told me o' that."

"Why, Mo, don't ye see, I only took it for bounce."

"What was it about his knife?"

"Just this, Mo dear! Now, don't you be excited. He says to me again:—'What are you good for, Polly Daverill?' And then I see he was handling a big knife with a buckhorn handle." M'riar was tremulous and tearful. "Oh, Mo!" she said. "Do consider! He wasn't that earnest, to be took at a chance word. He ain't so bad as you think of him. He was only showin' off like, to get the most he could."

"That's a queer way of showin' off—with a knife! P'r'aps it warn't open, though?" But it was, by M'riar's silence. "Anyways," Mo continued, "he won't come back so long as he thinks I'm here. To-morrow morning first thing I shall just drop round to the Station, and tip 'em a wink. Can't have this sort o' thing goin' on!"

M'riar's lighting of a candle seemed to hang fire. Said she:—"You'd think it a queer thing to say, if I was to say it, Mo!" And then, in reply to the natural question:—"Think what?" she continued:—"A woman's husband ain't like any other man. She's never quite done with him, as if he was nobody. It don't make any odds how bad he's been, nor yet how long ago it was.... It makes one creep to think...." She stopped abruptly, and shuddered.

"What he'll catch if he gets his deserts." Mo supplied an end for the sentence, gravely.

"Ah!—he might be.... What would it be, Mo, if he was tried and found guilty?"

"Without a recommendation to mercy? It was a capital offence. I never told it ye. Shall I tell it?"

"No—for God's sake!" Aunt M'riar stopped her ears tight as she had done before. "Don't you tell me nothing, Mo, more than I know already. That's plenty." Uncle Mo nodded, pointed to tightly closed lips to express assent, and she resumed speech with hearing. "Capital offence means ... means?..."

"Means he would go to the scragging-post, arter breakfast one morning. There's no steering out o' that fix, M'riar. He's just got to, one day, and there's an end of it!"

"And how ever could I be off knowing it at the time? Oh, but it makes me sick to think of! The night before—the night before, Mo! Supposin' I wake in the night, and think of him, and hear the clocks strike! He'll hear them too, Mo."

"Can't be off it, M'riar! But what of that? He won't be a penny the worse, and he'll know what o'clock it is." Remember that Uncle Mo had some particulars of Daverill's career that Aunt M'riar had not. For all she knew, the criminal's capital offence might have been an innocent murder—a miscarriage in the redistribution of some property—a too zealous garrotting of some fat old stockjobber. "I'm thinkin' a bit of the other party, M'riar," said Mo. He might have said more, but he was brought up short by his pledge to say nothing of the convict's last atrocity. How could he speak the thought in his mind, of the mother of the victim in a madhouse? For that had made part of the tale, as it had reached him through the police-sergeant. So he ended his speech by saying:—"What I do lies at my own door, M'riar. You're out of it. So I shan't say another word of what I will do or won't do. Only I tell you this, that if I could get a quiet half an hour with the gentleman, I'd ... What would I do?... Well!—I'd save him from the gallows—I would! Ah!—and old as I am, I'd let him keep a hold on his knife.... There—there, old lass! I do wrong to frighten ye, givin' way to bad temper. Easy does it!"

For a double terror of the woman's position was bred of that mysterious, inextinguishable love that never turns to hate, however hateful its object may become; and her dread that if this good, unwieldy giant—that was what Mo seemed—crossed his path, that jack-knife might add another to her husband's many crimes. This dread and counter-dread had sent all Aunt M'riar's blood to her heart, and she might have fallen, but that Mo's strong hand caught her in time, and landed her in a chair. "I was wrong—I was wrong!" said he gently. All the fires had died down before the pallor of her face, and his only thought was how could she be spared if the destroyer of her life was brought to justice.

They said no more; what more was there to be said? Aunt M'riar came round, refusing restoratives. Oh no, she would be all right! It was only a turn she got—that common event! They adjourned, respectively, to where Dolly and Dave were sleeping balmily, profoundly.

But Uncle Mo was discontented with the handiwork of Creation. Why should a cruel, two-edged torture be invented for, and inflicted on, an inoffensive person like M'riar? There didn't seem any sense in it. "If only," said he to his inner soul, "they'd a-let me be God A'mighty for five minutes at the first go-off, I'd a-seen to it no such a thing shouldn't happen." Less than five minutes would have been necessary, if a full and unreserved concession of omnipotence had been made.

Dave was a man of his word, though a very young one. He seized the earliest opportunity to indite two letters of congratulation to his honorary grandmothers, including Dolly in his rejoicing at the discovery of their relationship. He wrote as though such discoveries were an everyday occurrence.

His mistakes in spelling were few, the principal one arising from an old habit of thought connecting the words sister and cistern, which had survived Aunt M'riar's frequent attempts at correction. When he exhibited his Identical Notes to the Powers for their sanction and approval, this was pointed out to him, and an allegation that he was acting up to previous instructions disallowed nem. con. He endeavoured to lay to heart that for the future cistern was to be spelt sister, except out on the leads. A holographic adjustment of the c, and erasure of the n, was scarcely a great success, but the Powers supposed it would do. Uncle Mo opposed Aunt M'riar's suggestion that the two letters should go in one cover to Strides Cottage, for economy, as mean-spirited and parsimonious, although he had quite understood that the two Grannies were under one roof; otherwise Dave would have directed to Mrs. Picture at the Towers. So to Strides Cottage they went, some three days later.