n't send it, it'll be took. Just you
tell her that! Now here's my name di-rected on this envelope. You can
tell me of a quiet pub where I can find a gaff, and you send me word
there. See? Quiet pub, a bit outside the village! Or stop a bit!--I'll
go to J. Hancock--the Old Truepenny, on the road I come here by. Rather
better than a mile along." Of course the old lady knew the Old
Truepenny. Everyone did, in those parts. She took the envelope with the
name, and as the twilight was now closing in to darkness, made no
attempt to read it, but slipped it carefully in her pocket. Then a
thought occurred to her, and she hesitated visibly on an inquiry. He
anticipated it, saying:--"Hay?--what's that?"

"If Mrs. Prichard should seem not to know--not to recognise...." She
meant, suppose that Mrs. Prichard denies your claim to be her son, what
proof shall I produce? For any man could assume any name.

The convict probably saw the need for some clear token of his identity.
"If the old woman kicks," said he, "just you remember this one or two
little things from me to tell her, to fetch her round. Tell her, I'm her
son Ralph, got away from Australia, where he's been on a visit these
twenty-five years past. Tell her.... Yes, you may tell her the girl's
name was Drax--Emma Drax. Got it?"

"I can remember Emma Drax."

"She'll remember Emma Drax, and something to spare. She was a little
devil we had some words about. _She'll_ remember her, and she'll know me
by her. Then you can tell her, just to top up--only she won't want any
more--that her name ain't Prichard at all, but Daverill.... What!--Well,
of course I meant making allowance for marrying again. Right you are,
missus! How the Hell should I have known, out there?" For he had
mistaken Granny Marrable's natural start at the too well-remembered name
she had scarcely heard for fifty years, for a prompt recognition of his
own rashness in assuming it had been intentionally discarded.

She, for her part, although her hearing was good considering her age,
could not have been sure she had heard the name right, and was on the
edge of asking him to repeat it when his unfortunate allusion to
Hell--the merest colloquialism with him--struck her recovered equanimity
amidships, and made her hesitate. Only, however, for a moment, for her
curiosity about that name was uncontrollable. She found voice against a
beating heart to say:--"Would you, sir, say the name again for me? My
hearing is a bit