A nice quote for no one to see

In a far country where I once lived the ladies used to go around paying
calls, under the humane and kindly pretence of wanting to see each other;
and when they returned home, they would cry out with a glad voice, saying,
"We made sixteen calls and found fourteen of them out"--not meaning that
they found out anything important against the fourteen--no, that was only
a colloquial phrase to signify that they were not at home--and their manner
of saying it expressed their lively satisfaction in that fact.
-Mark Twain