“Where to, sir?” asked the flyman.
“Petersham.”
“Ah!” exclaimed the driver—this was entirely uncalled-for, you know—“you mean balmy Petersham.”
“Yes,” rejoined the unsuspecting stranger, “the air there is good, I suppose.”
“I don’t mean the hair,” he was astonished to be told, “but the people what lives there. Don’t you know that they’re all balmy on the crumpet—what you call ‘off it’?”
My poor friend looked a little astonished at this. I am afraid he is not intimately acquainted with the language of the streets.
“Oh! you know!” continued the man, noticing this air of bewilderment: “they’re dotty, that’s what they are.”
“You mean non compos mentis,” rejoined my friend at last, comprehending what was meant, and heroically and waggishly endeavouring to get a bit of his own back, and in turn to mystify this derogatory licensed hackney-driver.
The man, convinced that he had happened upon a “sanguinary German,” said: “Yus, I suppose that’s what you call it in your country,” and mounted his box, and in silence drove down to this asylum for the “balmy.”