This nurse of Juliet’s was a talkative, easy-tempered old person, very fond of her nursling--of whom she had had charge since she was a baby--and good-natured after a fashion, but vulgar-minded, and very selfish if anything came to cross her own convenience. Juliet had coaxed her into sympathy about her present affairs, and Romeo, being a very handsome, open-handed young gentleman, the nurse for the moment was on their side, and consented to act as messenger between them. But her own aches and pains were at all times more important to the old woman than the concerns of anyone else; and even when returning from her mission to settle the time of the marriage, she was more occupied in recounting her own ailments than in relieving the anxiety of her young mistress to hear news of Romeo. However, as long as things went well, she was willing to be amiable, and the young girl was at least not left entirely destitute of any confidant. But when trouble arose, the nurse’s shallow, selfish nature became apparent, and poor Juliet was soon to learn that she must rely solely on her own strength and judgment in the sorrows that overwhelmed her. After the marriage Juliet returned home, and there presently the nurse joined her. She carried the ladder of cords she had gone to fetch, but she flung it down with a gesture of despair, and her face was the picture of woe. “Ay me! What news? Why do you wring your hands?” exclaimed Juliet, a sudden chill of terror clouding the sunshine of her joy. “Ah, well-a-day! he’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead!” wailed the nurse. “We are undone, lady--we are undone! Alack the day! He’s gone, he’s killed, he’s dead!” Juliet thought, of course, that the nurse referred to Romeo, especially when she went on weeping and wailing and saying that she had seen him lying dead with her own eyes. Juliet’s heart was nearly broken at the dreadful news, when suddenly the stupid old woman, in her confused style began to lament: “O Tybalt, Tybalt, the best friend I had! O courteous Tybalt! Honest gentleman! That ever I should live to see thee dead!” “What do you mean?” said poor, bewildered Juliet. “Is Romeo slaughtered, and is Tybalt dead? My dear-loved cousin and my dearer lord?” “Tybalt is gone, and Romeo banished,” said the nurse. “Romeo that killed him, he is banished.” Her words were plain enough now. Juliet shrank back in horror. “Did Romeo’s hand shed Tybalt’s blood?” “It did--it did. Alas the day, it did!” Juliet’s first impulse was to heap reproaches on her newly made husband, who hid so vile a nature under so fair a seeming; but when the nurse chimed eagerly in, and said there was no trust, no faith, no honesty in man,--they were _all_ perjured, _all_ dissemblers, Juliet immediately changed her tone, and broke into an indignant defence of Romeo. “Will you speak well of him that killed your cousin?” asked the nurse.