Sister Nora understood, and was quite ready with one. "Oh yes, I see what you mean, Mrs. Marrable--whether the old woman is the right sort of old woman for Dave. And it's very natural and quite right of you to wonder. _I_ should if I hadn't seen the boy's parents--his uncle and aunt.... Oh yes, of course, they are not his parents in the vulgar sense! Don't be commonplace, Gwen!... nice, quiet, old-fashioned sort of folk, devoted to the children. As for the prizefighting, I don't think anything of that. I'm sure he fought fair; and it was the same for both anyhow! He's an old darling, _I_ think. I'll show him to you, Gwen, down his native court. Really, dear Granny Marrable, I don't think you need be the least uneasy. We'll go and see Dave the moment we get up to London--won't we, Gwen?" "We'll go there first," said Gwen. But for all this reassurance the old lady was clearly uneasy. "With regard to the boy Michael," said she hesitatingly, "did you happen, ma'am, to _see_ the boy Michael.... I mean, did he?..." "Did he turn up when I was there, you mean? Well--no, he didn't! But after all, what does the boy Michael come to in it? He'd made a slide down the middle of the Court, and Uncle Moses prophesied his death on the gallows! But, dear me, all children make slides--girls as well as boys. I used to make slides, all by myself, in Scotland." Granny Marrable's mind ran back seventy years or so. "Yes, indeed, that is true; and so did I." She nodded towards the chimneyshelf, where the mill-model stood--Dave's model. "There's the mill where I had my childhood, and it's there to this day, they tell me, and working. And the backwater above the dam, it's there, too, I lay, where my sister Maisie and I made a many slides when it froze over in the winter weather. And there's me and Maisie in our lilac frocks and white sun-bonnets. Five-and-forty years ago she died, out in Australia. But I've not forgotten Maisie." She could mention Maisie more serenely than Mrs. Prichard, _per contra_, could mention Phoebe. But, then, think how differently the forty-five years had been filled out in either case. Maisie had been forced to _ricordarsi del tempo felice_ through so many years of _miseria_. Phoebe's journey across the desert of Life had paused at many an oasis, and their images remained in her mind to blunt the tooth of Memory. The two ladies at least heard nothing in the old woman's voice that one does not hear in any human voice when it speaks of events very long past. Gwen showed an interest in the mill. "You and your sister were very much alike," she said.