“Yes,” I said, “but I do not think you would like it.”
“Now, I assure you, Mr. Homos, you were never more mistaken in your life. I perfectly delight in your naïveté. I know that the Altrurians don't think as we do about some things, and I don't expect it. What is it you would like to ask?”
“Well, why should you require your servants to go down on a different elevator from yourselves?”
“Why, good gracious!” cried the lady.--“aren't they different from us in _every_ way? To be sure, they dress up in their ridiculous best when they go out, but you couldn't expect us to let them use the _front_ elevator? I don't want to go up and down with my own cook, and I certainly don't with my neighbor's cook!”
“Yes, I suppose you would feel that an infringement of your social dignity. But if you found yourself beside a cook in a horse-car or other public conveyance, you would not feel personally affronted?”
“No, that is a very different thing. That is something we cannot control. But, thank goodness, we can control our elevator, and if I were in a house where I had to ride up and down with the servants I would no more stay in it than I would in one where I couldn't keep a dog. I should consider it a perfect outrage. I cannot understand you, Mr. Homos! You are a gentleman, and you must have the traditions of a gentleman, and yet you ask me such a thing as that!”
I saw a cast in her husband's eye which I took for a hint not to press the matter, and so I thought I had better say, “It is only that in Altruria we hold serving in peculiar honor.”
“Well,” said the lady, scornfully, “if you went and got your servants from an intelligence-office, and had to look up their references, you wouldn't hold them in very much honor. I tell you they look out for their interests as sharply as we do for ours, and it's nothing between us but a question of--”
“Yes,” she assented, as if this clinched the matter.
“That's what I'm always telling you, Dolly, and yet you _will_ try to make them your friends, as soon as you get them into your house. You want them to love you, and you know that sentiment hasn't got anything to do with it.”
“Well, I can't help it, Dick. I can't live with a person without trying to like them and wanting them to like me. And then, when the ungrateful things are saucy, or leave me in the lurch as they do half the time, it almost breaks my heart. But I'm thankful to say that in these hard times they won't be apt to leave a good place without a good reason.”