"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 was remarking of it to Mrs. Treadwell,' she said, 'only just afore we come upstairs, ma'am,' she said, 'that you was one of twins, ma'am,' she said. And then old Mrs. Prichard she says, 'Ay, to be sure,' she says, 'twins we were--Maisie and Phoebe. Forty-five years ago she died, Phoebe did,' she says. 'And I've never forgotten Phoebe,' she says. 'Nor yet I shan't forget Phoebe not if I live to be a hundred!'" "Goard blind my soul!" Mr. Wix muttered this to himself, and though Aunt Elizabeth Jane failed to catch the words, she shuddered at the manner of them. She did not like this Mr. Wix, and wished she had not forgotten her tortoiseshell spectacles, so as to see better what he was like. The words she heard him say next had nothing in them to cause a shudder, though the manner of them showed vexation:--"If that ain't tryin' to a man's temper! There she was all the time!" It is true he qualified this last substantive by the adjective the story so often has to leave out, but it was not very uncommon in those days along the riverside between Fulham and Kew. "I thought you said the name was Daverill," said Miss Hawkins, taking the opportunity to release a curl-paper at a looking-glass behind bottles. It was just upon time to open, and the barmaid had got her Sunday out.