"We were twins," said Granny Marrable. But, as it chanced, Gwen at this moment looked at her watch, and found it had stopped. She missed the old woman's last words. When she had satisfied herself that the watch was still going she found that Granny Marrable's speech had lost its slight trace of sadness. She had become a mere recorder, _viva voce_. "Maisie married and went abroad--oh dear, near sixty years ago! She died out there just after our father--yes, quite forty-five--forty-six years ago!" Her only conscious suppression was in slurring over the gap between Maisie's departure and her husband's; for both ladies took her meaning to be that her sister married to go abroad, and did not return. It was more conversation-making than curiosity that made Gwen ask:--"Where was 'abroad'? I mean, where did your sister go?" The old lady repeated:--"To where she met her death, in Australia. Five-and-forty years ago. But I have never forgotten Maisie." Gwen, looking more closely at the mill-model as one bound to show interest, said:--"And this is where you used to slide on the ice with her, on the mill-dam, all that time ago. Just fancy!" The reference to Maisie was the merest chat by the way; and the conversation, at this mention of the ice, harked back to Sapps Court. "Of course you made slides, Granny Marrable," said Sister Nora; "and very likely somebody else tumbled down on the slides. But you have never been hanged, and Michael won't be hanged. It was only Uncle Moses's fun. And as for old Mrs. Picture, I daresay if the truth were known, Mrs. Picture's a very nice old lady? I like her for taking such pains with Dave's letter-writing. But we'll see Mrs. Picture, and find out all about it. Won't we, Gwen?" Gwen assented _con amore_, to reassure the Granny, who, however, was evidently only silenced, not convinced, about this elderly person in London, that sink of iniquities.