sword hung up over the head of the mother's bed; it's very touching. But
the poor little place is so bare!"

Mrs. Makely sighed, and there fell a little pause, which she broke with a
question she had the effect of having kept back.

"There is one thing I should like to ask you, too, Mr. Homos. Is it true
that everybody in Altruria does some kind of manual labor?"

"Why, certainly," he answered, quite as if he had been an American.

"Ladies, too? Or perhaps you have none."

I thought this rather offensive, but I could not see that the Altrurian
had taken it ill. "Perhaps we had better try to understand each other
clearly before I answer that question. You have no titles of nobility as
they have in England--"

"No, indeed! I hope we have outgrown those superstitions," said Mrs.
Makely, with a republican fervor that did my heart good. "It is a word
that we apply first of all to the moral qualities of a person."

"But you said just now that you sometimes forgot that your seamstress was
not a lady. Just what did you mean by that?"

Mrs. Makely hesitated. "I meant--I suppose I meant--that she had not the
surroundings of a lady; the social traditions."

"Then it has something to do with social as well as moral qualities--with
ranks and classes?"