Page:Traveler from Altruria, Howells, 1894.djvu/259

Rh a dollar to hear you: and that makes it so very embarrassing. Oh, dear Mr. Homos! You won't be so implacably high-principled as all that! Think that you are doing it for the house of Gawd."

The woman made me sick.

"Then, no one," said the Altrurian, "can feel aggrieved, or unfairly used, if I say what I have to say in the open air, where all can listen equally, without any manner of preference or distinction. We will go up to the edge of the grove over-looking the tennis-court, and hold our meeting there, as the Altrurian meetings are always held, with the sky for a roof, and with no walls but the horizon."

"The very thing!" cried Mrs. Makely. "Who would ever have thought you were so practical, Mr. Homos? I don't believe you're an Altrurian, after all: I believe you are an American in disguise."

The Altrurian turned away, without making any response to this flattering attribution of our nationality to him; but Mrs. Makely had not waited for any. She had flown off, and I next saw her attacking the landlord, with such apparent success, that he slapped himself on the leg and vanished, and immediately the porters and bell-boys and all the men-servants began