t enjoy him a
little before the end, surely! Just a brief extension of a year or so--a
month or so even.

"I will bring him to-morrow, mother. He's too heavy to carry, but John
will drive us."

Old Maisie seemed quite happy in this prospect of a great-grandson.
"They are so nice at that age," said she. Why was the child's name
Peter?--she asked, and was told that he was so called after his
grandfather, Ruth's husband. "He is dead now, is he not?" was her
puzzled inquiry, and Ruth replied:--"I buried his grandfather thirteen
years ago." To which her mother said:--"Tell me all his name, that I may
know," and was told "Peter Thrale." Whereupon she made an odd
comment:--"Oh yes--I was told. But that was when Ruth was Widow Thrale."

She never came to any real clearness about the lost history of her
sister and daughter. Having once grasped their identities, her mind
flinched from the effort to master the forty-odd blank years of
ignorance.

But out of the cloud there was to come a grandchild a year old, and in
time its mother with another smaller still, newer still. To overhear
this talk made Gwen discredit the doctor's unfavourable auguries. How
was it possible that old Mrs. Picture should be dying, when she could
look forward to a baby in the flesh with such a zest?

The prospect of this visitor had set the old mind thinking of her own
babies in the days gone by, apparently. There was her eldest, dead and
buried in England while Ruth was still too young to put by memories of
her elder brother. Then her second, who died in his boyhood in
Australia. No mother ever loses count of her children, even when her
mind fails at the last: and old Maisie's memory was still green over the
loss of these two. But the third--how about the one who survived his
childhood? When she spoke of him, his image was that of an innocent
mischievous youngster, full of mad pranks, his father's favourite, not a
trace in him of the vices that had made his manhood a curse to himself
and his mother. In some still feebler stage of her failing powers the
happier phase of his career might have remained isolated. Now, her mind
was still too active to avoid the recollection of its sequel.

"What is it, mother dearest?" So Gwen heard her daughter speaking to
her, trying for a clue to the cause of some symptom of a concealed
distress. Then Granny Marrable:--"Yes, Maisie darling, what is it. Tell
us." Some answer came, which caused Ruth to say:--"Shall I a