Whether Mrs. Camp
read my perception of this fact in my face or not I cannot say, but she
was evidently determined that I should not feel a difference in her. She
held out her hand to me first, and said that I never could know how many
heavy hours I had helped to lighten for her, and then she turned to the
Altrurian and took his hand. "Oh!" she said, with a long, deep-drawn sigh,
as if that were the supreme moment of her life. "And are you really from
Altruria? It seems too good to be true!" Her devout look and her earnest
tone gave the commonplace words a quality that did not inhere in them, but
Mrs. Makely took them on their surface.
"Yes, doesn't it?" she made haste to interpose, before the Altrurian could
say anything. "That is just the way we all feel about it, Mrs. Camp. I
assure you, if it were not for the accounts in the papers and the talk
about it everywhere, I couldn't believe there _was_ any such place as
Altruria; and if it were not for Mr. Twelvemough here--who has to keep all
his inventions for his novels, as a mere matter of business routine--I
might really suspect him and Mr. Homos of--well, _working_ us, as my
husband calls it.
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