s me is--how
ever she came to turn up in her sister's house, and ne'er a one of 'em
to know the other from Queen Anne!"

"We've got to take that in the lump, Thomas. I expect your Aunt Keziah
she'll say it was Providence. I say it was just a chance, and Dr. Nash
he says the same. You ask him!"

Tom considered thoughtfully, and decided. "I expect it was just a
chance," said he. "Things happen of theirselves, if you let 'em alone.
Anyhow, it hasn't happened above this once." That was a great relief,
and Tom seemed to breathe the freer for it.

"I haven't a word to say against Providence," said Mrs. Lamprey. "On the
contrary I go to Church every Sunday, and no one can find fault. So does
Dr. Nash, to please Miss Euphemia. But one has to consider what's
reasonable. What I say is:--if it was Providence, what was to prevent
its happening twenty years ago? Nothing stood in the way, that I see."

Tom shook his head, to show that neither did he see what stood in the
way of a more sensible and practical Divine ordination of events. "Might
have took place any time ago, in reason," said he. "Anyhow, it hasn't.
It's happened now." Tom seemed always to be seeking relief from
oppressive problems, and looking facts in the face. "I'm not so sure,"
he continued, abating the mare slightly to favour conversation, "that
I've got all the scoring right. This old lady she went out to
Australia?"

"Yes--fifty years ago." Mrs. Lamprey told what she knew, but not nearly
all the facts as the story knows them. She had not got the convict
incidents correctly from the conversation of Dr. Nash with his sister.
Remember that he had only known it since yesterday morning. Mrs.
Lamprey's version did not take long to tell.

"What I look at is this," said Tom, seeming to stroke with his whiplash
the thing he looked at, on the mare's back. "Won't it turn old Granny
Marrable wrong-side-up, seeing her time of life. Not the other old
Goody--she's been all the way to Australia and back!" This only meant
that nothing could surprise one who had such an experience. As to the
effect on Granny Marrable, Mrs. Lamprey said no--quite the reverse. Once
it was Providence, there you stuck, and there was no moving you! There
was some obscurity about this saying; but no doubt its esoteric meaning
was, that once you accounted for anything by direct Divine
interposition, you stood committed to a controversial attitude which
would render you an obstructive to liberal tho