ow fifty years ago, even the very same that had called her, a mere
baby, to see the heron that flew away? Yes--the same Maisie as much as
she herself was the same Phoebe! Did her brain reel to think of the days
when she took her own image in an unexpected mirror for her
sister--kissed the cold glass with a shudder of horror before she found
her mistake? Did she wonder now if this Mrs. Prichard could seem to her
another self, as Maisie had wondered would _she_ seem to _her_? Would
all be changed and chill, and the old music of their past be silence, or
at best the jangle of a broken chord? Would this latter end of Life, for
both, be nothing but a joint anticipation of the grave? Gwen tried to
sound the plummet of thought in an inconceivable surrounding, to guess
at something she herself might think were she impossibly conditioned
thus, and failed.

The story, too, must be content to fail. All it can guarantee is facts;
and speculation recoils from the attempt to see into old Phoebe's soul
as she dismounts from the farmer's cart, at the door beyond which was
the thing to baffle all belief; to stultify all those bygone years, and
stamp them as delusions.

Whatever she thought, her words were clear and free from trepidation,
and John Costrell repeated them after her, making them the equivalent of
printed instructions. "If yow are ba-adly wanted, Granny, I'm to coom
for ye with ne'er a minute's loss o' time. That wull I. And for what I
be to tell the missus, I bean't to say owt."

No--that would not do! The early return of the cart, without the Granny,
had to be somehow accounted for. Nothing had been said to Maisie junior,
by her, of not returning to supper. "Bide there a minute till I tell ye,
John," said she, and went towards the door.

Keziah Solmes was coming out, having heard the cart. She started, with
the exclamation:--"Why, God-a-mercy, 'tis the Granny herself!" and made
as though to beat a retreat into the house, no doubt thinking to warn
Widow Thrale within. Old Phoebe stopped her, saying, quite firmly:--"_I_
know, Cousin Keziah. Tell me, how is Mrs. Prichard?"

Keziah, taken aback, lost presence of mind. "What can ye know o' Mrs.
Prichard, Granny?" said she sillily. She said this because she could not
see how the information had travelled.

"How is she?" old Phoebe repeated. And something in her voice
said:--"Answer straight!" At least, so Keziah thought, and
replied:--"The worser by the bad shake she's had