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 sen