at?" Mr. Wix started as if a wasp had stung him, as
the old charwoman's knock came at the private entrance alongside of the
bar. He seemed very sensitive, always on the watch for surprises.

"Only old Treadwell from next door. _She_ ain't going to hurt you, Tom.
You be easy." Miss Hawkins spoke with another manner as well as another
name now that she and this man were alone. She may never possibly have
known his own proper name, he having been introduced to her as Thomas
Wix twenty years ago. An introduction with a sequel which scarcely comes
into the story.

His answer was beginning:--"It's easy to say be easy ..." when the woman
left the room to admit Aunt Elizabeth Jane. Who came in finishing the
drying of hands, suddenly washed, on a clean Sunday apron. "Lawsy me,
Miss Hawkins!" said she. "I didn't know you had anybody here."

It was not difficult to _entamer_ the conversation. After a short
interlude about the weather, to which the man's contribution was a grunt
at most, the old lady had been started on the subject of her nephew and
Sapps Court, and to this he gave attention. If she had had her
tortoiseshell glasses she might have been frightened by the way he
knitted his brows to listen. But she had left them behind in her hurry,
and he kept back in a dark corner.

"About this same aged widow body," said he, fixing the conversation to
the point that interested him. "What sort of an age now should you give
her? Eighty--ninety--ninety-five--ninety-nine?" He stopped short of a
hundred. Nobody one knows is a hundred. Centenarians are only in
newspapers.

"I can tell you her age from her lips, mister. Eighty-one next birthday.
And her name, Maisie Prichard."

Mr. Wix's attention deepened, and his scowl with it. "Now, can you make
that safe to go upon?" he said with a harsh stress on a voice already
harsh. "How came the old lady to say her own christened name? I'll pound
it I might talk to you most of the day and never know your first name.
Old folks they half forget 'em as often as not."

Miss Hawkins struck in:--"Now you're talking silly, Mr. Wix. How many
young folk tell you their christened names right off?" But she had got
on weak ground. She got off it again discreetly. "Anyhow, Mrs. Treadwell
she's inventing nothing, having no call to." She turned to Aunt
Elizabeth Jane with the question:--"How come she to happen to mention
the name, ma'am?"

"Just as you or I might, Miss Julia. Mrs. Wardle she said, 'I