Again the ladies laughed.
“Do all the ladies take snuff?”
Miss Flucker asked the question.
“Nearly all the old ladies carry their snuff-boxes in their pockets or work-bags. There’s one lady, however, who does not—Aunt Hipsy Jenkins. Perhaps I ought to say she is well along in years, and that the town clerk never has cried her. She carries her nose as she pleases. She says if the Lord had intended it for a dust-hole, he would have put it on the other end up.”
A merry peal of laughter rang through the garden—so joyful that several ladies and gentlemen joined the group, to hear what the young man from the country was saying.
“Her name,” said Robert, by way of explanation, “is Hepsibah, but everybody calls her Hipsy.”
“Evidently,” said Isaac Coffin, “she is a lady who is up to snuff.”
Again the company laughed.
“You may be sure she never minces things, but speaks her mind, whether anybody likes it or not,” Robert replied.