one of sympathy had to make up for it. "We should have
seen, ma'am," said she.

"Supposing it had all gone on like as it was then, and we had just grown
old together! Supposing we had neither married, and no man had come into
it, should we all our lives have been mistaken for one another, so you
could not tell us apart?"

Aunt M'riar said "Ah!" and shook her head. She was not imaginative
enough to contribute to a conversation so hypothetical.

There was nothing of pathos, to a bystander, in the old woman's musical
voice, beyond its mere age--its reedy tone--which would have shown in it
just as clearly had she been speaking of any topic of the day. Conceive
yourself speaking about long forgotten events of your childhood to a
friend born thirty--forty--fifty years later, and say if such speech
would not be to you what old Mrs. Prichard's was to herself and her
hearer, much like revival of the past history of someone else. It was
far too long ago now--if it had ever been real; for sometimes indeed it
seemed all a dream--to lacerate her heart in recollecting it. The
memories that could do that belonged to a later time; some very much
later--the worst of them. Not but that the early memories could sting,
too, when dragged from their graves by some remorseless
resurrectionist--some sound, like that piano; some smell, like those
lilies of the valley. Measure her case against your own experience, if
its span of time is long enough to supply a parallel.

Her speech became soliloquy--was it because of a certain want of pliancy
in Aunt M'riar?--and seemed to dwell in a disjointed way on the
possibility that her sister might have changed with time otherwise than
herself, and might even have been hard to recognise had they met again
later. It would be different with two girls of different ages, each of
whom would after a long parting have no guide to the appearance of her
sister; while twins might keep alike; the image of either, seen in the
glass, forecasting the image of the other.

Aunt M'riar made a poor listener to this, losing clues and forging false
constructions. But her obliging disposition made her seem to understand
when she did not, and did duty for intelligence. Probably Dave--on the
watch for everything within human ken--understood nearly as much as Aunt
M'riar. Something was on the way, though, to rouse her, and when it came
she started as from a blow. What was that the old lady had just said?
How came that name