sitting room when her lodger
entered. She turned to greet him.

"I don't know as I'm doin' right to keep you from your walk, Mr. Bangs,"
she said. "And I won't keep you very long. But I did want to talk with
you for just a minute or two. I wanted to ask your advice about--about a
business matter."

Now this was very funny indeed. It would have been hard to find a richer
joke than the idea of consulting Galusha Bangs concerning a matter of
business. But both parties to this consultation were too serious to see
the joke at that moment.

Galusha nodded solemnly. He faltered something about being highly
honored and only too glad to be of service. His landlady thanked him.

"Yes," she said, "I knew you would be. And, as I say, I won't keep you
very long. Sit down, Mr. Bangs. Oh, not in that straight up-and-down
thing. Here, in the rocker."

Galusha lifted himself from the edge of the straight-backed chair upon
which he had perched and sat upon the edge of the rocking-chair instead.
Martha looked at him sitting there, his collar turned up, his cap brim
and earlaps covering two thirds of his face and his spectacles at least
half of the remaining third, his mittened hands twitching nervously in
his lap, and, in spite of her feelings, could not help smiling. But it
was a fleeting smile.

"Take off your things, Mr. Bangs," she said. "You'll roast alive if you
don't. It's warm in here. Primmie forgot and left the dampers open and
the stove was pretty nearly red-hot when I came in just now. Yes, take
off your overcoat and cap, and those mittens, for mercy sakes."

Galusha declared that he didn't mind the mittens and the rest, but she
insisted and he hastily divested himself of his wrappings, dropping
them upon the floor as the most convenient repository and being greatly
fussed when Miss Phipps picked them up and laid them on the table.

"I--I beg your pardon," he stammered. "Really, I DON'T know why I am
so thoughtless. I--I should be--ah--hanged or something, I think. Then
perhaps I wouldn't do it again."

Martha shook her head. "You probably wouldn't in that case," she said.
"Now, Mr. Bangs, I'm going to try to get at that matter I wanted to
ask your opinion about. Do you know anything about stocks--stockmarket
stocks, I mean?"

Her lodger looked rather bewildered.

"Dear me, no; not a thing," he declared.

She did not look greatly disappointed.

"I didn't suppose you did," she said. "You--well, you don't look li