"Yes?"
"Tell us!"
"Please tell us!"
"Hear, hear!" buzzed the eager chorus.
Then came the first intimation of the truth, slowly and smilingly delivered, but bringing shattering disillusion, nevertheless, to the trusting relatives: "The American plan of helpin' people consists in showin' 'em how they can help themselves."
The effect came gradually in a movement of general surprise and consternation.
"Oh, I say!"
"But——"
"You don't mean—you surely don't mean——"
"Tell ye exactly what I mean. Yer all nice people, but ye've been trained wrong. Your idea is to sit in the sunshine and let somebody shake plums into yer lap, which is all right if ye can find a feller to do it, but I'm tired o' shakin' plums and the tree's pretty well skinned, so——" Here he turned to the countess and Harriet with his most ingratiating smile: "Ladies, I want to ask you a question. Suppose you were on a desert island and were gettin' terribly hungry, and suppose ye looked up and saw some nice, ripe cocoanuts waitin' to be picked. You'd say to yourselves: 'Them cocoanuts look awful good,' and ye'd ring like fury for the butler and the maid to come and pick 'em and make 'em into cocoanut pies. But the butler and the maid wouldn't show up, because yer on a desert island—uninhabited. See? So after a while ye'd get tired o' ringin' and ye'd say to the countess——" here he beamed on Mrs. Merle, "'Countess,' ye'd say, 'it ain't according to Hoyle fer ladies to climb cocoanut trees, but this is a case of hustle or starve, so we'll flip up a cent to see which one of us boosts the other into them branches.'"