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"Do you think they wouldn't be too severe upon it?" I asked. "Well, Mrs. Camp might," Mrs. Makely consented, with a smile. "She goes in for rather serious fiction; but I think Lizzie would enjoy a good, old-fashioned love-story, where everybody got married, as they do in your charming books."
Makely, and this energetic woman made us take two tickets apiece, as soon as she got them printed, over in the village. She got little hand-bills printed, and had them scattered about through the neighborhood, at all the hotels, boarding-houses, and summer cottages, to give notice of the time and place of the talk on Altruria.
I could not stand it, and I got up to go away, feeling extremely particeps criminis. Mrs. Makely seemed to have a conscience as light as air. "If Reuben Camp or the head-waiter don't bring back some of those tickets, I don't know what I shall do. I shall have to put chairs into the aisles and charge five dollars apiece for as many people as I can crowd in there.
Twelvemough, the author you know his books, of course; and Mr. Homos, a gentleman from Altruria." The young fellow opened the gate he leaned on and came out to us. He took no notice of me, but he seized the Altrurian's hand and wrung it. "I've heard of you" he said. "Mrs. Makely, were you going to our place?" "Why, yes." "So do, then. Mother would give almost anything to see Mr. Homos.
Makely, "I don't believe I can tell you what a lady is." We all laughed together at her frank confession. The Altrurian asked: "But do I understand that one of her conditions is that she shall have nothing whatever to do?" "Nothing to do!" cried Mrs. Makely. "A lady is busy from morning till night. She always goes to bed perfectly worn out." "But with what?" asked the Altrurian.
Twelvemough, because you naturally want to keep Mr. Homos to yourself, and I don't blame you at all; but I'm simply not going to let you, and that's all there is about it." The pleasure I felt at this announcement was not unmixed, but I tried to keep Mrs. Makely from thinking so, and I was immensely relieved when she found a chance to say to me, in a low voice: "I know just how you're feeling, Mr.
Makely to tell me, for, as she said quite frankly, she could not imagine my not knowing. She asked me if I really wanted her to begin at the beginning, and, when I said that I did, she took a little more time to laugh at the idea, and then she said, "I suppose you mean a brown-stone, four-story house in the middle of a block?" "Yes, I think that is what I mean," I said.
"You mean to the country people? Well, they have to stand a good deal of that. The summer folks that spend four or five months of the year here don't seem to do anything from morning till night." "Ah, but you must recollect that they are resting! You have no idea how hard they all work in town during the winter," Mrs. Makely urged, with an air of argument. "Perhaps the tramps are resting, too.
A laugh went up, and then, at sight of Mrs. Makely heading our little party, the people round Homos civilly made way for us. She rushed upon him, and seized his hand in both of hers; she dropped her fan, parasol, gloves, handkerchief, and vinaigrette in the grass to do so. "Oh, Mr. Homos," she fluted, and the tears came into her eyes, "it was beautiful, beautiful, every word of it!
Makely was one of those fatuous women whose eagerness to make a point excludes the consideration even of their own advantage. "I'm sure," she said, as if speaking for the upper classes, "we haven't got any individuality at all. We are as like as so many peas or pins. In fact, you have to be so in society. If you keep asserting your own individuality too much, people avoid you.
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