ry to produce surprise
in her husband; a worthy man, but imperturbable by anything short of
earthquakes or thunderbolts. "Ye may sa-ay your vairy worst to Sam,"
said Elizabeth, "and he'll just sa-ay back, 'Think a doan't knaw that,'
he'll say, 'afower ever yow were born?' and just gwarn with his sooper.
And I give ye my word, Widow Thrale, I no swooner told it him than there
he sat! An' if he come down on our ta-able wi' th' fla-at of his ha-and
once, that he did thrice and mower, afower he could sa-ay one word. He
_did_, and went nigh to break it, but it be o-ak two-inch thick
a'mo-ast. Then a said, 'twas enough to wa-aken oop a ma-an all through
the night, he did!" He seemed, however, not to have suffered in this
way, for his wife added:--"Wa-aken him oop? Not Sam, I lay! Ta-akes a
souse o' cold pig to wa-aken up Sam afower t' marnin!" Ruth felt braced
by this bringing of the event within human possibilities. Improbable
possibilities surprise. Impossible events stun.

She co-operated in domesticities with her useful neighbour, glancing
once or twice at the figure on the bed, and reinforced in the belief
that all was safe there, for the time. For she saw what seemed slight
natural movement, for ease. Presently she went to hear how it fared with
her other mother, her normal one. The cross purposes of her relations to
the two old sisters were an entanglement of perplexities.

Granny Marrable, asleep when Ruth looked stealthily in at her, was waked
by a creak with which the door just contrived to disappoint hopes of a
noiseless escape. She called after her:--"Yes, who's that?" Whereupon
Ruth returned. It was their first real word alone since the disclosure.

"Oh, mother, have you slept?" She kissed the old worn-out face tenderly;
feeling somehow the reserve of strength behind the response she met.
"Oh, can you--_can_ you--make it out?... Yes, she is lying still. She
has seen that letter." She dropped her voice, and shuddered to name it.

"My dear," said Granny Marrable, answering her question, "I cannot say
truly yet that I can make it out. But I thank God for letting me be able
to know that this must be Maisie. For I know her for Maisie, when she
talks of the bygone time. And that letter--God is good, for that! For it
was that told of how she died--that wicked poison-bite! My child, it has
never gone quite out of my heart to think your mother died so far away
in such pain--never in all these years! And now I know it fo