ve been influenced by a wish to
obliterate her whole past, and this wish may have been the cause of her
adoption of a name not her own. Some lingering reluctance to make her
severance from her own belongings absolute may have dictated the choice
of the name of Prichard, which was that of an old nurse of her
childhood, who had stood by her mother's dying bed. It would serve every
reasonable purpose of disguise without grating on memories of bygone
times. A shred of identity was left to cling to. It is less clear why
the quasi-daughter whom she had never seen should have repudiated her
married name. Polly was under no obligation not to call herself Mrs.
Daverill, unless it were compliance with her promise to keep the
marriage secret. She, however, acquiesced in the Mrs., and supplied a
name as a passport to a respectable widowhood. But she did not dress the
part very vigorously, and report soon accepted the husband as a bad lot
and a riddance. Nothing very uncommon in that!

CHAPTER VII

OF DAVE WARDLE'S CONVALESCENCE. OF MRS. RUTH THRALE, WIDOW AND
OGRESS, WHO APPRECIATED HIM. HIS ACCOUNT OF HIS HOSPITAL
EXPERIENCE. HOW HE MADE THE ACQUAINTANCE OF A COUNTESS, AND TOLD
HER ABOUT WIDOW THRALE'S GRANDFATHER'S WATER-MILL. CONCERNING JUNO
LUCINA. THESEUS AND ARIADNE. HOW DAVE DETECTED A FAMILY LIKENESS,
AND NEARLY RUBBED HIS EYES OUT. HOW GRANNY MARRABLE SHOWED HIM THE
MILL AT WORK AND MR. MUGGERIDGE

If the daylight were not so short in October at Chorlton-under-Bradbury,
in Rocestershire, that month would quite do for summer in as many
autumns as not. As it is, from ten till five, the sun that comes to say
goodbye to the apples, that will all be plucked by the end of the
month, is so strong that forest trees are duped, and are ready to do
their part towards a green Yule if only the midday warmth will linger on
to those deadly small hours of the morning, when hoarfrost gets the thin
end of its wedge into the almanack, and sleepers go the length of coming
out of bed for something to put over their feet, and end by putting it
over most of their total. From ten till five, at least, the last
swallows seem to be reconsidering their departure, and the skylarks to
be taking heart, and thinking they can go on ever so much longer. Then,
not unfrequently, day falls in love with night for the sake of the
moonrise, and dies of its passion in a blaze of golden splendour. But
the memory of her