She looked at the caller suspiciously, her glance racing over his linen suit, his white shoes, the Panama hat in his hand.  She was puzzled, for plainly this wasn’t the usual applicant for board and lodging.  Perhaps, then, he was a successful house-to-house agent for some indispensable necessity—­say an ice-pick that would pull nails, open a can, and peel potatoes.  Or maybe a religious book agent.  She rather suspected him of wanting to sell her Biblical Prophecies Elucidated by a Chicago Seer, or something like that.  Or, stay:  perhaps he was a church scout sent out to round up stray souls.  Whatever he might be, she was bitterly resentful of having been taken from the thick of her work to answer his ring.  She wasn’t interested in her soul, her hot and tired body being a much more immediate concern.  Heaven is far off, and hell has no terrors and less interest for a girl immured in a red-hot kitchen in a Middle Western town in the dog-days.

“If it’s a Bible, we got one.  If it’s sewin’-machines, we ain’t, but don’t.  If it’s savin’ our souls, we belong to church reg’lar an’ ain’t interested.  If it’s explainin’ God, nothin’ doin’!  An’ if it’s tack-pullers with nail-files an’ corkscrews on ’em, you can save your breath,” said the girl rapidly, in a heated voice, and with a half-dry hand on the door-knob.

Mr. Chadwick Champneys’s long, drooping mustache came up under his nose, and his bushy eyebrows twitched.

“I am not trying to sell anything,” he said hurriedly, in order to prevent her from shutting the door in his face, which was her evident intention.

She said impatiently:  “If you’re collectin’, this ain’t our day for payin’, an’ you got to call again.  Come next week, on Tuesday.  Or maybe Wednesday or Thursday or Friday or Sattiday.”  The door began to close.

He inserted a desperate foot.

“I wish to see Miss Simms—­Miss Anne, or Nancy Simms.  My information is that she lives in this house.  I should have stated my errand at once, had I been allowed to do so.”  He looked at the girl reprovingly.

Before she could reply, a female voice from a back region rose stridently: 

“Nancy!  You Nancy!  What in creation you mean, gassin’ this hour o’ day when them biscuits is burnin’ up in the oven?  Send that feller about his business, whatever it is, and you come tend to yours!”

The girl hesitated, and frowned.

“If you come to see Anne Simms, same as Nancy Simms, I’m her—­I mean, she’s me,” said she, hurriedly.  “I got no time to talk with you now, Mister, but you can wait in the parlor until I dish up dinner, and whilst they’re eatin’ I’ll have time to run up and see what you want.  Is it partic’ler?”

“Very.”

“Come on in an’ wait, then.”

“Nancy!  You want I should come up there after you?  Oh, my stars, an’ that girl knows how partic’ler Poppa is about his biscuits; they gotta be jest so or he won’t look at ’em, an’ her gassin’ and him likely to raise the roof!” screamed the voice.