ifty years ago, still survived in two
hearts that were not too old to love; for even those who think that love
can die, and be as though it had never been, may make concession to its
permanency in the case of twins--may even think concession scientific.
But it is strange--strange beyond expression--that at the time of this
story each should have had love in her heart for the same object, our
little Dave Wardle; that Master Dave's very kissable countenance had
supplied the lips of each with a message of solace to a tired soul. And
most of all that the tears of each, and the causes of them, had provoked
the inquisitiveness of the same pair of blue eyes and set their owner
questioning, and that through all this time the child had in his secret
consciousness a few words that would have fired the train. Never was a
spark so near to fuel, never an untold tale so near its hearer, never a
draught so near to lips athirst.

But Dave's account of the mill was for the time forgotten. It happened
that old Mrs. Prichard was not receiving just at the time of his return,
so his visits upstairs had to be suspended. By the time they were
renewed the strange life in the country village had become a thing of
the past, and important events nearer home had absorbed the mill on the
mantelshelf, and the ducks in the pond and Widow Thrale and Granny
Marrable alike. One of the important events was that Dave was to be took
to school after Christmas.

It was in this interim that old Mrs. Prichard became a very great
resource to Aunt M'riar, and when the time came for Dave to enter on his
curriculum of scholarship, the visiting upstairs had become a recognised
institution. Aunt M'riar being frequently forsaken by Uncle Mo, who
marked his objection to the scholastic innovation by showing himself
more in public, notably at The Rising Sun, whose proprietor set great
store by the patronage of so respectable a representative of an
Institution not so well thought of now as formerly, but whose traditions
were still cherished in the confidential interior of many an ancient
pot-house of a like type--Aunt M'riar, so forsaken, made these absences
of her brother-in-law a reason for conferring her own society and
Dolly's on the upstairs lodger, whenever the work she was engaged on
permitted it. She felt, perhaps, as Uncle Mo felt, that the house warn't
like itself without our boy; but if she shared his feeling that it was a
waste of early life to spend it in l