Page:Traveler from Altruria, Howells, 1894.djvu/118

112 all like to recognize the facts, so long as we are not expected to do anything about them; then, we deny them.

"Yes, quite as bad as that," said Mrs. Makely.

"Well, my dear, you are expensive, you know," said her husband, "and if we want to have you, why we've got to hustle, first."

"Oh, I don't blame you, you poor things! There's nothing to be done about it; it's just got to go on and on; I don't see how it's ever to end."

The Altrurian had been following us with that air of polite mystification which I had begun to dread in him. "Then, in your good society you postpone, and even forego, the happiness of life in the struggle to be rich?"

"Well, you see," said Makely, "a fellow don't like to ask a girl to share a home that isn't as nice as the home she has left."

"Sometimes," his wife put in, rather sadly, "I think that it's all a mistake, and that we'd be willing to share the privations of the man we loved."

"Well," said Makely, with a laugh, "we wouldn't like to risk it."

I laughed with him, but his wife did not, and in the