“Why, Cynthy Badlam, what do y’ mean?” said Nurse Byloe.  “Y’ don’t think anything dreadful has come o’ that child’s wild nater, do ye?”

“Child!” said Cynthia Badlam,—­“child enough to wear this very gown I have got on and not find it too big for her neither.” [It would have pinched Myrtle here and there pretty shrewdly.]

The two women looked each other in the eyes with subtle interchange of intelligence, such as belongs to their sex in virtue of its specialty.  Talk without words is half their conversation, just as it is all the conversation of the lower animals.  Only the dull senses of men are dead to it as to the music of the spheres.

Their minds travelled along, as if they had been yoked together, through whole fields of suggestive speculation, until the dumb growths of thought ripened in both their souls into articulate speech, consentingly, as the movement comes after the long stillness of a Quaker meeting.

Their lips opened at the same moment.  “You don’t mean”—­began Nurse Byloe, but stopped as she heard Miss Badlam also speaking.

“They need n’t drag the pond,” she said.  “They need n’t go beating the woods as if they were hunting a patridge,—­though for that matter Myrtle Hazard was always more like a patridge than she was like a pullet.  Nothing ever took hold of that girl,—­not catechising, nor advising, nor punishing.  It’s that dreadful will of hers never was broke.  I’ve always been afraid that she would turn out a child of wrath.  Did y’ ever watch her at meetin’ playing with posies and looking round all the time of the long prayer?  That’s what I’ve seen her do many and many a time.  I’m afraid—­Oh dear!  Miss Byloe, I’m afraid to say—­what I’m afraid of.  Men are so wicked, and young girls are full of deceit and so ready to listen to all sorts of artful creturs that take advantage of their ignorance and tender years.”  She wept once more, this time with sobs that seemed irrepressible.

“Dear suz!” said the nurse, “I won’t believe no sech thing as wickedness about Myrtle Hazard.  You mean she’s gone an’ run off with some good-for-nothin’ man or other?  If that ain’t what y’ mean, what do y’ mean?  It can’t be so, Miss Badlam:  she’s one o’ my babies.  At any rate, I handled her when she fust come to this village,—­and none o’ my babies never did sech a thing.  Fifteen year old, and be bringin’ a whole family into disgrace!  If she was thirty year old, or five-an’-thirty or more, and never’d had a chance to be married, and if one o’ them artful creturs you was talkin’ of got hold of her, then, to be sure,—­why, dear me!—­law!  I never thought, Miss Badlam!—­but then of course you could have had your pickin’ and choosin’ in the time of it; and I don’t mean to say it’s too late now if you felt called that way, for you’re better lookin’ now than some that’s younger, and there’s no accountin’ for tastes.”