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“Well, that might have been,” agreed Abby, “although Eudora always had the name of having a beautiful disposition.”

“I have always found,” said Mrs. Joseph Glynn, with an air of wisdom, “that it is the beautiful dispositions which are the most set the minute they get a start the wrong way. It is the always-flying-out people who are the easiest to get on with in the long run.”

“Well,” said Abby, “maybe that is so, but folks might get worn all to a frazzle by the flying-out ones before the long run. I’d rather take my chances with a woman like Eudora. She always seems just so, just as calm and sweet. When the Ames’s barn, that was next to hers, burned down and the wind was her way, she just walked in and out of her house, carrying the things she valued most, and she looked like a picture–somehow she had got all dressed fit to make calls–and there wasn’t a muscle of her face that seemed to move. Eudora Yates is to my mind the most beautiful woman in this town, old or young, I don’t care who she is.”

“I suppose,” said Julia Esterbrook, “that she has a lot of money.”

“I wonder if she has,” said Mrs. John Bates.

The others stared at her. “What makes you think she hasn’t?” Mrs. Glynn inquired, sharply.

“Nothing,” said Mrs. Bates, and closed her thin lips. She would say no more, but the others had suspicions, because her husband, John Bates, was a wealthy business man.

“I can’t believe she has lost her money,” said Mrs. Glynn. “She wouldn’t have been such a fool as to do what she has if she hadn’t money.”

“What has she done?” asked Mrs. Bates, eagerly.

“What has she done?” asked Abby, and Mrs. Lee looked up inquiringly.

The faces of Mrs. Glynn, her daughter, and her sister became important, full of sly and triumphant knowledge.

“Haven’t you heard?” asked Mrs. Glynn.

“Yes, haven’t you?” asked Ethel.

“Haven’t any of you heard?” asked Julia Esterbrook.

“No,” admitted Abby, rather feebly. “I don’t know as I have.”

“Do you mean about Eudora’s going so often to the Lancaster girls’ to tea?” asked Mrs. John Bates, with a slight bridle of possible knowledge.

“I heard of that,” said Mrs. Lee, not to be outdone.

“Land, no,” replied Mrs. Glynn. “Didn’t she always go there? It isn’t that. It is the most unheard-of thing she had done; but no woman, unless she had plenty of money to bring it up, would have done it.”

“To bring what up?” asked Abby, sharply. Her eyes looked as small and bright as needles.

Julia regarded her with intense satisfaction. “What do women generally bring up?” said she.

“I don’t know of anything they bring up, whether they have it or not, except a baby,” retorted Abby, sharply.

Julia wilted a little; but her sister, Mrs. Glynn, was not perturbed. She launched her thunderbolt of news at once, aware that the critical moment had come, when the quarry of suspicion had left the bushes.

“She has adopted a baby,” said she, and paused like a woman who had fired a gun, half scared herself and shrinking from the report.

Ethel seconded her mother. “Yes,” said she, “Miss Eudora has adopted a baby, and she has a baby-carriage, and she wheels it out any time she takes a notion.” Ethel’s speech was of the nature of an after-climax. The baby-carriage weakened the situation.

The other women seized upon the idea of the carriage to cover their surprise and prevent too much gloating on the part of Mrs. Glynn, Ethel, and Julia.

“Is it a new carriage?” inquired Mrs. Lee.

“No, it looks like one that came over in the ark,” retorted Mrs. Glynn. Then she repeated: “She has adopted a baby,” but this time there was no effect of an explosion. However, the treble chorus rose high, “Where did she get the baby? Was it a boy or a girl? Why did she adopt it? Did it cry much?” and other queries, none of which Mrs. Glynn, Ethel, and Julia could answer very decidedly except the last. They all announced that the adopted baby was never heard to cry at all.