her talk. He
said, too, not to write to you just yet, for she might get quite
right in a little while, and then he would tell you himself."

"Poor darling old Mrs. Picture!" said Gwen. "Fancy her going off like
this! But I think I can see what has done it. You know, she has told me
how she was one of twins, and how her father had a flour-mill in Essex."

"Did she say the name?"

"No--she's very odd about that. She never tells any names, except that
her sister was Phoebe. She told me _that_.... Oh yes--she told me her
little girl's name was Ruth." Gwen did not know the christened name of
either Granny Marrable or Widow Thrale, when she said this.

"Phoebe and Ruth," said the Earl. "Pretty names! But _what_ has done it?
What can you see?... You said just now?..."

"Oh, I understand. Of course, it's the twins and the flour-mill in
Essex. Such a coincidence! Enough to upset anybody's reason, let alone
an old woman of eighty! Poor dear old Mrs. Picture!--she's as sane as
you or I."

"Suppose we finish the letter. Where were we? 'Tell you himself'--is
that it? All right!"

"Then she was quiet again, quite a long time. But when we was
sitting together in the firelight after supper, she had it come on
again, and I fear by my own fault, for Dr. Nash says I was in the
wrong to say a word to her of any bygones. And yet it was but to
clear her mind of the mixing together of Darenth Mill and this
mill she remembers. For I had but just said the name of ours, and
that my grandfather's name was Isaac Runciman when I saw it was
coming on, she shaking and trembling and crying out like before,
'Oh, what is it? Only tell me what it _is_!' And then 'Our mill was
Darenth Mill,' and 'Isaac Runciman was my father.' And other things
she could not have known that had been no word of mine, only Dr.
Nash found out why, all these things having been told to little
Dave Wardle last year, and doubtless repeated childlike. And yet,
my lady, though I know well where the dear old soul has gotten all
these histories, seeing there is no other way possible, it is I do
assure you enough to turn my own reason to hear her go on telling
and telling of one thing and another all what our little boy we had
here has made into tales for his amusement, such-like as Mr. Pitt
and Mr. Fox our horses, and she had just remembered the foreman's
name Mugger