“Here, you men,” she said, “have been trying for a whole week to get something out of Mr. Homos about his country, and you have left it to a poor, weak woman, at last, to think how to manage it. I do believe that you get so much interested in your own talk, when you are with him, that you don’t let him get in a word, and that’s the reason you haven’t found out anything about Altruria yet from him.” In view of the manner in which she had cut in at Mrs. Camp’s, and stopped Homos on the very verge of the only full and free confession he had ever been near making about Altruria, I thought this was pretty cool; but, for fear of worse, I said: “You’re quite right, Mrs. Makely. I’m sorry to say that there has been a shameful want of self-control among us, and that, if we learn anything at all from him, it will be because you have taught us how.” She could not resist this bit of taffy. She scarcely gave herself time to gulp it before she said: “Oh, it’s very well to say that now! But where would you have been if I hadn’t set my wits to work? Now, listen! It just popped into my mind, like an inspiration, when I was thinking of something altogether different. It flashed upon me in an instant: a good object, and a public occasion.” “Well?” I said, finding this explosion and electrical inspiration rather enigmatical. “Why, you know, the Union Chapel, over in the village, is in a languishing condition, and the ladies have been talking all summer about doing something for it, getting up something--a concert or theatricals or a dance or something--and applying the proceeds to repainting and papering the visible church; it needs it dreadfully. But, of course, those things are not exactly religious, don’t you know; and a fair is so much trouble; and _such_ a bore, when you get the articles ready, even; and everybody feels swindled; and now people frown on raffles, so there is no use thinking of them. What you want is something striking. We did think of a parlor-reading, or perhaps ventriloquism; but the performers all charge so much that there wouldn’t be anything left after paying expenses.” She seemed to expect some sort of prompting at this point; so I said: “Well?” “Well,” she repeated, “that is just where your Mr. Homos comes in.” “Oh! How does he come in there?” “Why, get him to deliver a Talk on Altruria. As soon as he knows it’s for a good object, he will be on fire to do it; and they must live so much in common there that the public occasion will be just the thing that will appeal to him.” It did seem a good plan to me, and I said so. But Mrs. Makely was so much in love with it that she was not satisfied with my modest recognition. “Good? It’s magnificent! It’s the very thing! And I have thought it out, down to the last detail--”