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