“Well, I can’t say that exactly”; and, having admitted so much, I did not feel bound to impart a fact that popped perversely into my mind. I was once talking with a Western money-lender, a very good sort of fellow, frank and open as the day; I asked him whether the farmers generally paid off their mortgages, and he answered me that if the mortgage was to the value of a fourth of the land, the farmer might pay it off, but if it were to a half, or a third even, he never paid it, but slaved on and died in his debts. “You may be sure, however,” I concluded, “that our young friend takes a jaundiced view of the situation.” “Now, really,” said Mrs. Makely, “I must insist upon dropping this everlasting talk about money. I think it is perfectly disgusting, and I believe it was Mr. Makely’s account of his speculations that kept me awake last night. My brain got running on figures till the dark seemed to be all sown with dollar-marks, like the stars in the Milky Way. I--ugh! What in the world is it? Oh, you dreadful little things!” Mrs. Makely passed swiftly from terror to hysterical laughter as the driver pulled up short and a group of barefooted children broke in front of his horses and scuttled out of the dust into the road-side bushes like a covey of quails. There seemed to be a dozen of them, nearly all the same in size, but there turned out to be only five or six; or at least no more showed their gleaming eyes and teeth through the underbrush in quiet enjoyment of the lady’s alarm. “Don’t you know that you might have got killed?” she demanded, with that severity good women feel for people who have just escaped with their lives. “How lovely the dirty little dears are!” she added, in the next wave of emotion. One bold fellow of six showed a half-length above the bushes, and she asked: “Don’t you know that you oughtn’t to play in the road when there are so many teams passing? Are all those your brothers and sisters?” He ignored the first question. “One’s my cousin.” I pulled out a half-dozen coppers, and held my hand toward him. “See if there is one for each.” They had no difficulty in solving the simple mathematical problem except the smallest girl, who cried for fear and baffled longing. I tossed the coin to her, and a little fat dog darted out at her feet and caught it up in his mouth. “Oh, good gracious!” I called out in my light, humorous way. “Do you suppose he’s going to spend it for candy?” The little people thought that a famous joke, and they laughed with the gratitude that even small favors inspire. “Bring your sister here,” I said to the boldest boy, and, when he came up with the little woman, I put another copper into her hand. “Look out that the greedy dog doesn’t get it,” I said, and my gayety met with fresh applause. “Where do you live?” I asked, with some vague purpose of showing the Altrurian the kindliness that exists between our upper and lower classes.