Mrs. Deans struck one hand into the other.
"Well, it beats all! I never! If you'll believe me, I don't know."
"I just wondered whether she had or not, but I never saw you to ask, or if I saw you I forgot, and I didn't hear tell of its being named yet. Now what do you suppose, Jane, speaking confidential between ourselves, and knowing it'll go no further—if you was asked, now, what would you say she'd call it, if 'twas put to you?"
"Well, Marian," replied Mrs. Deans, with the air of a baffled astrologer, "since you ask me plain, I'll tell you one thing—I can see as far through a ladder as most people, and if I go falling it ain't through going about with my eyes shut; but all I know about it is one thing, and that ain't two; whatever Myron Holder calls the young one she won't call it Jed, for that old Mrs. Holder won't allow at no rate—for no favor. Not that Myron said anything about it; that ain't her way. She's close—terrible close is Myron, and deep beyond belief. But old Mrs. Holder says—and what she says she'll stick to, being stubborn and fixed in her notions—she says, 'No naming of such brats after my son.' No—not if Myron asks on bended knee, Mrs. Holder won't give in."
"But say, Jane," hazarded Mrs. Wilson, as one who advances an improbable and wild suggestion, "supposing Myron Holder don't ask, but just does it? Do you suppose she'd dare?"
"'Tain't hardly likely," returned Mrs. Deans, looking judicial; "that would be pretty serious, even for Myron Holder. But I don't know; she's bad clean through—that's easy enough seen; why she makes the greatest time over that young one you ever seen. Why, Mrs. Warner told me that the other Sunday, when she went to Holder's well for a pail of water, that the house being very quiet, she went and looked in the windows, knowing old Mrs. Holder was out to Disney's for milk. She couldn't see nothing in the front room nor the kitchen, but in the bedroom there she seen Myron Holder with the boy. The boy was asleep, and she was kneeling by the bed, talking away to the sleeping child!—'s good's praying to it, Mrs. Warner said."
"I've no patience with such goings on as them," said Mrs. Wilson, clicking her needles agitatedly. "I should think she'd be ashamed to act up like that, considering all that's come and gone."
"Well, you'd think so," agreed Mrs. Deans, winding up her ball of rags. "But there, Marian! There's no use talking, her kind don't care for nothing."
"Well, it's to be hoped she don't throw no slurs on any decent fellow, like your Male or my Homer," said Mrs. Wilson, with dismal foreboding in her voice. "It would be just like her to pick on some fine name. But I warn her of one thing: slurs is something I can't abide and won't put up with."
"Nor me, Marian, nor me," said Mia. Deans, her spirit rising in anticipation of the imaginary fray. "Let Myron Holder call her brat Gamaliel, and I'll let her know for once, in her life, that respectable people has their rights. Just only let her, once, and that's all. If I don't show her pretty prompt what's what, blame me!"