sent
form. But it is best to make no pretence to niceties of construction,
when a mere presentation of events is the object in view. The following
circumstances in the life of old Mrs. Prichard constitute a case in
point. The story might, so to speak, ask its reader's forgiveness for so
sudden a break into the narrative. Consider that it has done so, and
amend the tale should you ever retell it.

Maisie Runciman, born in the seventies of the previous century, and
close upon eighty years of age at the time of this story, was the
daughter of an Essex miller, who became a widower when she and her twin
sister Phoebe were still quite children. His only other child, a son
many years their senior, died not long after his mother, leaving them to
the sole companionship of their father. He seems to have been a
quarrelsome man, who had estranged himself from both his wife's
relatives and his own. He also had that most unfortunate quality of
holding his head high, as it is called; so high, in fact, that his twin
girls found it difficult to associate with their village neighbours, and
were driven back very much on their own resources for society. Their
father's morose isolation was of his own choosing. He was, however,
affectionate in a rough way to them, and their small household was
peaceful and contented enough. The sisters, wrapped up in one another,
as twins so often are, had no experience of any other condition of life,
and thought it all right and the thing that should be.

All went well enough--without discord anyhow, however
monotonously--until Maisie and Phoebe began to look a little like women;
which happened, to say the truth, at least a year before their father
consented to recognise the fact, and permit them to appear in the robes
of maturity. About that time the young males of the neighbourhood became
aware, each in his private heart, of an adoration cherished for one or
other of the beautiful twins from early boyhood. Would-be lovers began
to buzz about like flies when fruit ripens. If any one of these youths
had any doubt about the intensity and immutability of his passion, it
vanished when the girls announced official womanhood by appearing at
church in the costume of their seniors. Some students of the mysterious
phenomena of Love have held that man is the slave of millinery, and that
women are to all intents and purposes their skirts. It is too delicate a
question for hurried discussion in a narrative which is n