your people? I ought to have thought of that."

"I guess we can make it right with him. I dare say he felt more surprised
than disgraced. But we must make haste a little now; your train was half
an hour late, and we shall not stand so good a chance for supper if we are
not there pretty promptly."

"No?" said the Altrurian. "Why?"

"Well," I said, with evasive lightness, "first come, first served, you
know. That's human nature."

"Is it?" he returned, and he looked at me as one does who suspects another
of joking.

"Well, isn't it?" I retorted; but I hurried to add: "Besides, I want to
have time after supper to show you a bit of our landscape. I think you'll
enjoy it." I knew he had arrived in Boston that morning by steamer, and I
now thought it high time to ask him: "Well, what do you think of America,
anyway?" I ought really to have asked him this the moment he stepped from
the train.

"Oh," he said, "I'm intensely interested," and I perceived that he spoke
with a certain reservation. "As the most advanced country of its time,
I've always been very curious to see it."

The last sentence raised my dashed spirits again, and I said, confidently:
"You must find our system of baggage-checks delightful." I said this
because it is one of the first things we brag of to foreigners, and I had
the habit of it. "By-the-way," I ventured to add, "I suppose you meant to