The novelist paused, and nobody laughed.
“It seems to me that your experience is instructive, rather than amusing,” said the banker. “It shows that something can be done, if you try.”
“Well,” said Mr. Twelvemough, “I thought that was the moral, myself, till the fellow came afterwards to thank me. He said that he considered himself very lucky, for the manager had told him that there were six other men had wanted that job.”
Everybody laughed now, and I looked at my hostess in a little bewilderment. She murmured, “I suppose the joke is that he had befriended one man at the expense of six others.”
“Oh,” I returned, “is that a joke?”
No one answered, but the lady at my right asked, “How do you manage with poverty in Altruria?”
I saw the banker fix a laughing eye on me, but I answered, “In Altruria we have no poverty.”
“Ah, I knew you would say that!” he cried out. “That's what he always does,” he explained to the lady. “Bring up any one of our little difficulties, and ask how they get over it in Altruria, and he says they have nothing like it. It's very simple.”
They all began to ask me questions, but with a courteous incredulity which I could feel well enough, and some of my answers made them laugh, all but my hostess, who received them with a gravity that finally prevailed. But I was not disposed to go on talking of Altruria then, though they all protested a real interest, and murmured against the hardship of being cut off with so brief an account of our country as I had given them.
“Well,” said the banker at last, “if there is no cure for our poverty, we might as well go on and enjoy ourselves.”