Page:Traveler from Altruria, Howells, 1894.djvu/163

Rh delightful books;" but although she paid me this perfunctory compliment, it was perfectly apparent to me that in the esteem of this disingenuous woman the distinguished stranger was a far more important person than the distinguished author. Whether Mrs. Camp read my perception of this fact in my face or not, I cannot say, but she was evidently determined that I should not feel a difference in her. She held out her hand to me first, and said that I never could know how many heavy hours I had helped to lighten for her, and then she turned to the Altrurian, and took his hand. "Oh!" she said, with a long, deep, drawn sigh, as if that were the supreme moment of her life. "And are you really from Altruria? It seems too good to be true!" Her devout look and her earnest tone gave the commonplace words a quality that did not inhere in them, but Mrs. Makely took them on their surface.

"Yes, doesn't it?" she made haste to interpose, before the Altrurian could say anything. "That is just the way we all feel about it, Mrs. Camp. I assure you, if it were not for the accounts in the papers, and the talk about it everywhere, I couldn't believe there was any such place as Altruria; and if it