Mr. Pulcifer regarded the questioner with scornful superiority.
"Pick it out!" he repeated. "He never picked it out, I picked it out for him. You don"t know the first principles of sellin", Ras. If you had me to help around here you wouldn"t have so many stickers in your stock."
Beebe, gazing after the retreating figure of Mr. Bangs, sniffed.
"If I had your bra.s.s, Raish," he observed, calmly, "I"d sell it to the junk man and get rich. Well, maybe I won"t have so many stickers, as you call "em, if that little critter comes here often. What"s the matter with him; soft in the head?"
"Isn"t this his hat--the one he wore when he came in here?" queried Mrs.
Jubal Doane, one of the two customers.
Mr. Beebe picked it up. "Guess so," he replied. "Humph! I"ve seen that hat often enough, too. Used to belong to Cap"n Jim Phipps, that hat did.
Seen him wear it a hundred times."
Mrs. Becky Blount, the other customer, elevated the tip of a long nose.
"Well," she observed, "if Martha Phipps is lendin" him her pa"s hats SO early, I must say--"
She did not say what it was she must say, but she had said quite enough.
Martha herself said something when her boarder appeared beneath his new headgear. When he removed it, upon entering the dining room, she took it from his hand.
"Is THIS the cap you just bought, Mr. Bangs?" she asked.
"Yes," said Galusha, meekly. "Do you like it?"
She regarded the fuzzy yellow thing with a curious expression.
"Do you?" she asked.
The reply was astonishingly prompt and emphatic.
"I loathe it," said Galusha.
She transferred the stare from the cap to its owner"s face.
"You do!" she cried. "Then why in the world did you buy it?"
Mr. Bangs squirmed slightly. "He said I ought to," he answered.
"Who said so?"
"That man--that Mr. Pulcifer. Mr.--ah--Deedee--Beebe, I mean--was busy, and Mr. Pulcifer insisted on showing me the caps. I didn"t like this one at all, but he talked so much that--that I couldn"t stay and hear him any longer. He makes me very nervous," he added, apologetically. "I suppose it is my fault, but--ah--he does, you know."
"And do you mean to say that you took this--this outrage because Raish Pulcifer talked you into it?"
Galusha smiled sadly. "Well, he--he talked me into it--yes," he admitted. "Into the--ah--cap and out of the store. Dear me, yes."
Miss Martha drew a long breath.
"My heavens and earth!" she exclaimed. "And what did you do with father"s hat, the one you wore down there?"
Her lodger gasped. "Oh, dear, dear!" he exclaimed. "Oh, dear me! I must have left it in the shop. I"m SO sorry. How could I do such a careless thing? I"ll go for it at once, Miss Phipps."
He would have gone forthwith, but she stopped him.
"I"m goin" there myself in a little while," she said. "I"ve got some other errands there. And, if you don"t mind," she added, "I"d like to take this new cap of yours with me. That is, if you can bear to part with it."
She went soon afterward and when she returned she had another cap, a sane, respectable cap, one which was not a "sticker."
"I took it on myself to change the other one for this, Mr. Bangs," she said. "I like it lots better myself. Of course it wasn"t my affair at all and I suppose I ought to beg your pardon."
He hastened to rea.s.sure her.
"Please don"t speak so, Miss Phipps," he begged. "It was very, very kind of you. And I like this cap VERY much. I do, really.... I ought to have a guardian, hadn"t I?" he added.
It was precisely what she was thinking at the moment and she blushed guiltily.
"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 n.o.body 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?"
They certainly did not look much like Mr. Pulcifer"s. Galusha"s trunk had arrived at last, but the garments in it were as drab and old-fashioned and "floppy" as those he wore on his arrival. Horatio was invariably arrayed like a lily of the field--if by that term is meant a tiger lily. Raish generally finished his appraisal by adding, patronizingly:
"He"s all right, though, old Galushy is. Nothin" harmful about him. See how easy I get along with him. I shake hands with him and hit him a clip on the back, and, gosh t"mighty, he thinks I"m his best friend on earth.
He"d do anything for me, that old owl would."
And, perhaps, because it was given forth with such authority from the Pulcifer Mount Sinai, the fact that Bangs was very poor and was living at Gould"s Bluffs because of that poverty came to be accepted in East Wellmouth as a settled fact. So quickly and firmly was it settled that, a month later, Erastus Beebe, leaning over his counter in conversation with a Boston traveling salesman, said, as Galusha pa.s.sed the store:
"Queer-lookin" customer, ain"t he? One of our town characters, as you might say. Pretends he"s been all over creation, but the truth is he lives down here by the lighthouse and is poorer than the last pullet in Job"s coop. Kind of an inventor, or book writer, or some such crazy thing. Queer how that kind get that way, ain"t it?"
"Is that all he does for a living?" asked the salesman.
"Don"t do much of that, seems so, nowadays. Spends most of his time copyin" off tombstone-writin" over in the old Baptist graveyard. Seems to LIKE to be there, he does. Thunder sakes! a graveyard is the last place I"d spend MY time in."
The Bostonian made the obvious retort that it was probably the last place Mr. Beebe WOULD spend his time in.
Galusha, of course, was not in the least aware of the East Wellmouth estimate of himself, his fortune and his activities. He would not have been interested had he known. He was enjoying himself hugely, was gaining daily in health, strength, and appet.i.te, and was becoming thoroughly acquainted with Gould"s Bluffs, its surroundings, and its people.
He made many calls at the lighthouse nowadays. These calls were not especially for the purpose of cultivating Captain Jethro"s acquaintance, although the rugged, bigoted old light keeper afforded an interesting study in character. The captain"s moods varied. Sometimes he talked freely and interestingly of his experiences at sea and as keeper of the light. His stories of wrecks and life-saving were well told and Galusha enjoyed them. He cared less for Jethro"s dissertations on investments and deals and shrewd trades. It was plain that the old man prided himself upon them, however. On one occasion Mr. Bangs happened to mention Martha Phipps and hinted at his own fear that his lodging at the Phipps" home was in the nature of an imposition upon the lady"s good nature. The light keeper shook his s.h.a.ggy head impatiently.