“Yes, I do,” declared Mrs. Derwall.
“What?” inquired Mrs. Hopp with hesitation. “Is it anything I should know?”
“Indeed it is, my dear! But if you haven’t found it out yet you never will,” replied Mrs. Derwall with more emphasis than tact.
“What?” asked Mrs. Hopp again. “I wouldn’t want to be countenancing anything, you know.”
“Well,” put forth Mrs. Derwall oracularly, “any man who spends his time talking to women is a fool. I don’t care what he talks about.”
Mrs. Hopp stared at her friend with a dumb amazement in which there was something of expectation unfulfilled. At last, however, she found words of protest.
“But, Sophie—aren’t you a woman yourself?”
“I’m sorry to say I am,” admitted Mrs. Derwall, without hedging. “And I’m heartily ashamed of it.”
Mrs. Hopp was again lost in stupefaction. And then:
“Is it your idea, Sophie,” she inquired a little distantly, “that we—that Professor Murch’s friends make fools of themselves over him?”