"Talk abeout the 'woman with the sarpint tongue,'" chuckled Walky. "We sartain sure have our share of she in Polktown."
"What is the matter now, Walky?" asked Janice, gaily, not suspecting what was coming. "Has somebody got ahead of you in circulating a particularly juicy bit of gossip?"
"Huh!" snorted the expressman. "I gotter take a back seat, I have.
Did ye hear 'bout Hopewell Drugg gittin' drunk, an' beatin' his wife,
an' I dunno but they say by this time that it's his fault lettle
Lottie's goin' blind again——"
"Oh, Walky! it can't be true!" gasped the girl, horrified.
"What can't? That them old hens is sayin' sech things?" demanded the driver.
"That Lottie is truly going blind?"
"Dunno. She's in a bad way. Hopewell wants to send her back to Boston as quick's he can. I know that. And them sayin' that he's turned inter a reg'lar old drunk, an' sich."
"What do you mean, Walky?" asked Janice, seriously. "You cannot be in earnest. Surely people do not say such dreadful things about Mr. Drugg?"
"Fact. They got poor old Hopewell on the dissectin' table, and the way them wimmen cut him up is a caution to cats!"
"What women, Walky?"