When she gave him a chance to answer, at last, he said: “I shall be very happy to do what you wish, madam.”
“Will you?” she screamed. “Oh, I’m so glad! You have been so slippery about Altruria, you know, that I expected nothing but a point-blank refusal. Of course, I knew you would be kind about it. Oh, I can hardly believe my senses! You can’t think what a dear you are.” I knew she had got that word from some English people who had been in the hotel; and she was working it rather wildly, but it was not my business to check her. “Well, then, all you have got to do is to leave the whole thing to me, and not bother about it a bit till I send and tell you we are ready to listen. There comes Reuben, with his ox-team. Thank you so much, Mr. Homos. No one need be ashamed to enter the house of God”—she said Gawd, in an access of piety—“after we get that paint and paper on it; and we shall have them on before two Sabbaths have passed over it.”
She wrung the Altrurian’s hand; I was only afraid she was going to kiss him.
“There is but one stipulation I should like to make,” he began.
“Oh, a thousand,” she cut in.
“And that is, there shall be no exclusion from my lecture on account of occupation or condition. That is a thing that I can in no wise countenance, even in America; it is far more abhorrent to me even than money-making, though they are each a part and parcel of the other.”
“I thought it was that,” she retorted, joyously. “And I can assure you, Mr. Homos, there shall be nothing of that kind. Every one—I don’t care who it is or what they do—shall hear you who buys a ticket. Now, will that do?”
“Perfectly,” said the Altrurian, and he let her wring his hand again.
She pushed hers through my arm as we started for the dining-room, and leaned over to whisper jubilantly: “That will fix it. He will see how much his precious lower classes care for Altruria if they have to pay a dollar apiece to hear about it. And I shall keep faith with him to the letter.”
I could not feel that she would keep it in the spirit; but I could only groan inwardly and chuckle outwardly at the woman’s depravity.