“What is that you said, my dear?”
Palma repeated her question.
“Will I go with you to Vest Wirginny? That’s the furrin nation we was to war with, ain’t it?” inquired Mrs. Pole, going on to fill her muffin rings.
“Don’t mention the war, Poley. I cannot bear to talk of it.”
“Well, I won’t. But that Vest Wirginny—where is it? In New Orleenes?” inquired Mrs. Pole, whose ideas of geography were so vague that she once asked Palma if Africa was in the United States. And Palma, to spare the good woman’s self-esteem, answered that Africans, or their descendants, had been in America for a couple of centuries. Whereupon Mrs. Pole had added that, of course, she knew that America was in the United States. Palma had not set her right, but ruminated in her own mind on the fact of the future when our national New Jerusalem would not make a part of the Western continent, but the Western continent would be only a part of the grand republic of the planet Earth. But this is a digression. Now to return.
“West Virginia is much nearer than New Orleans,” replied Palma.
Mrs. Pole filled the last of her muffin rings and set the pan containing them on the range before she spoke again.
“And you and Mr. Stuart be going there to live, ma’am, you say?”
“Indeed, yes—and very soon, too.”
Mrs. Pole put the bowl of batter in the cupboard, covered it over with a clean napkin and sat down, “to save her back,” while her muffins were baking.