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 the objeck looks at me and nods three times very slowly, just as if to say 'you're right.' It frightened me, it did."

"'Tis your imagination, nurse, that's wot it is."

"Not it," retorted the nurse. "Imagination don't trouble me, so it don't; but I see wot I see, and there's no good a trying to persuade me different. That child is queer. Just look at it now a sucking its thumb and listening to every word we say, and taking it all in you'd think."

Augusta, her scanty downy hair brushed, her nose and cheeks shining with recent ablutions, certainly had something weird about her, or so it seemed to both the women. Her eyes had an elfish intelligence that was startling. She looked as if at any moment she might speak.

That she understood was only too evident, for she obeyed every direction given to her when it was to her fancy. At times her efforts to find a voice, to tell all she knew, could not be mistaken, and inspired as much fright and pity as the inarticulate cries of the deaf and dumb.

"What is she doing of now?" said the subordinate suddenly.