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." A sort of hysteric twitching that went through the frame of Cynthia Badlam dimly suggested to the old nurse that she was not making her slightly indiscreet personality much better by her explanations.