“Why, what makes you say that?” she asked.

“Oh, I’m not saying it, not as an original thought, you know; I’m merely repeating it.  Other people always say it, they’ve said it ever since I can remember.  Thank you very much for the cap, Miss Phipps.”

He was sunnily cheerful and very grateful.  There was not the slightest resentment because of her interference.  And yet if she had not interfered he would have worn the hideous yellow cap and been as cheerful under that.  Pulcifer had imposed upon him and he realized it, but he deliberately chose being imposed upon rather than listening to the Pulcifer conversation.  He was certainly a queer individual, this lodger of hers.  A learned man evidently, a man apparently at home and sure of himself in a world long dead, but as helpless as a child in the practical world of to-day.  She liked him, she could not help liking him, and it irritated her exceedingly to think that men like Raish Pulcifer and Erastus Beebe should take advantage of his childlike qualities to swindle him, even if the swindles were but petty.

“They shan’t do it,” she told Lulie Hallett, the next morning.  “Not if I can help it, they shan’t.  Somebody ought to look out for the poor thing, half sick and with nobody of his own within goodness knows how many miles.  I’ll look out for him as well as I can while he’s here.  My conscience wouldn’t let me do anything else.  I suppose if I pick out his other things the way I picked out that cap the whole of East Wellmouth will be talkin’; but I can’t help it, let ’em.”

For the matter of that, the Beebes and the Blounts and Doanes were talking already.  And within a fortnight Miss Phipps’ prophecy was fulfilled, the whole of East Wellmouth was talking of Galusha Bangs.  Some of the talk was malicious and scandalous gossip, of course, but most of it was fathered by an intense and growing curiosity concerning the little man.  Who was he?  What was his real reason for coming to East Wellmouth to live—­in the winter time?  What made him spend so many hours in the old cemetery?  Was he crazy, as some people declared, or merely “kind of simple,” which was the opinion of others?  Mr. Pulcifer’s humorous summing-up was freely quoted.

“He may not be foolish now,” observed Raish, “but he will be if he lives very long with that bunch down to the lighthouse.  Old Cap’n Jeth and Zach and Primmie Cash are enough to start anybody countin’ their fingers.  My opinion is, if you want to know, that this Bangs feller is just a little mite cracked on the subject of Egyptians and Indians and gravestones—­probably he’s read a lot about ’em and it’s sprained his mind, as you might say.  That would account for the big yarns he tells Prim about Africa and such.  As to why he’s come here to live, I cal’late I’ve got the answer to that.  He’s poorer’n poverty and it’s cheap livin’ down at Martha Phipps’s.  How do I know he’s poor?  Cripes t’mighty, look at his clothes!  Don’t look much like yours or mine, do they?”