Page:Traveler from Altruria, Howells, 1894.djvu/107

Rh which she broke with a question she had the effect of having kept back.

"There is one thing I should like to ask you, too, Mr. Homos. Is it true that everybody in Altruria does some kind of manual labor?"

"Why, certainly," he answered, quite as if he had been an American.

"Ladies, too? Or perhaps you have none!"

I thought this rather offensive, but I could not see that the Altrurian had taken it ill. "Perhaps we had better try to understand each other clearly before I answer that question. You have no titles of nobility as they have in England"—

"No, indeed! I hope we have outgrown those superstitions," said Mrs. Makely, with a republican fervor that did my heart good. "It is a word that we apply first of all to the moral qualities of a person."

"But you said just now that you sometimes forgot that your semptress was not a lady. Just what did you mean by that?"

Mrs. Makely hesitated. "I meant—I suppose I meant—that she had not the surroundings of a lady; the social traditions."