l was not very clear. "Don't you
remember?--to old Mrs. Marrable, at Strides Cottage?" Still not very
clear, he pretended he was, to save trouble. Then he weakened his
pretence, by saying:--"But I remember Mrs. Marrable, and Strides
Cottage, near forty years ago, when your Uncle George and I were two
young fellows. Fine, handsome woman she was--didn't look her age--she
had just married Farmer Marrable--was a widow from Sussex, I think.
Can't think what her name had been ... knew it once, too!"

"She's a fine-looking old lady now," said Gwen. "Isn't she, Mrs.
Picture?"

"I am sure she is that too, my dear, or you would not say so. Only my
eyesight won't always serve me nowadays as it did, not for seeing near
up." The reserves about Dave's other Granny were always there, however
little insisted on. Old Maisie was exaggerating about her eyesight. She
had seen her rival quite clearly enough to have an opinion about her
looks.

"Did you see the inside of the cottage, and the old chimney-corners? And
the well out at the back?" Thus the Earl.

"We didn't go in. I wanted to get home. But what a lot you recollect of
it, papa dear!"

"I ought to recollect something about it. It was Strides Cottage where
your Uncle George was taken when he broke his leg, riding."

"Oh, was it there? Yes, I've heard of that. His horse threw him on a
heap of stones, and bolted, and pitched into Dunsters Gap, and had to be
shot."

"Yes, he shouldn't have ridden that horse. But he was always at that
sort of thing, George." A sound came in here that had the same relation
to a sigh that a sip has to a draught. "Well!--Mrs. Marrable nursed him
up at Strides Cottage till he was fit to move--they were afraid about
his back at first--and I used to ride over every morning. We used to
chaff poor Georgy about his beautiful nurse.... Oh yes!--she was young
enough for that. Woman well under forty, I should say."

Gwen made calculations and attested possibilities. Oh dear, yes!--Granny
Marrable must have been under forty then. She surprised his lordship,
first by gently smoothing aside the silver hair on the old woman's
forehead, then by stooping down and kissing it. "Why, how old are you
now, dear?" she said, as though she were speaking to a child. He for his
part was only surprised, not dumfounded. He just felt a little glad his
Countess was elsewhere; and was not sorry, on looking round, to see that
no domestic was present. What a wild, ungovernable