"Perhaps you'll repeat that again, ma'am," said Mrs. Copp, eyeing Mrs. Macpherson in her sternest manner. "You had a note from him, Robert Hunter?"
"Yes, I had, ma'am. Writ by himself."
"Where was it written from?"
Mrs. Macpherson hesitated, conscious of her defects in the science of locality. "The prefessor would know," said she; "I'm not much of a geographer myself. Anyway it come from where he is, somewhere over in t'other hemisphere."
To a lady of Mrs. Copp's extensive travels, round the world a dozen times and back again, the words "over in t'other hemisphere," taken in conjunction with Robert Hunter's known death and burial, conveyed the idea that the celestial hemisphere, and not the terrestrial, was alluded to. She became convinced of one of two things: that the speaker before her was awfully profane, or else mad.
"I know the letters were six weeks reaching us," continued Mrs. Macpherson. "I suppose it would take about that time to get here from the place."
Mrs. Copp pushed her chair back in a heat. "This is the first time I ever came out to drink tea with the insane, and I hope it will be the last," she cried, speaking without reserve, according to her custom. "Ma'am, if you are not a model of profanity, you ought to be in Bedlam."
Mrs. Macpherson wiped her hot face and took out her fan. But she could give as well as take. "It's what I have been thinking of you, ma'am. Do you think you are quite right?"
"I right!" screamed Mrs. Copp in a fury. "What do you mean?"
"What do you mean?--come!--about me?"