“Oh, that’s all right, that’s all right, Miss Phipps.  I know I am a—­ah—­donkey in most matters.”

“You’re a long way from bein’ a donkey, Mr. Bangs.  And I didn’t say you were, of course.  But—­oh, well, never mind that.  So you don’t know anything about stocks and investments and such?”

“No, I don’t.  I am awfully sorry.  But—­but, you see, all that sort of thing is so very distasteful to me.  It bores me—­ah—­ dreadfully.  And so I—­I dodge it whenever I can.”

Martha sighed.  “Some of the rest of us would like to dodge it, too,” she said, “if we only could.  And yet—­” she paused and regarded him with the odd expression she had worn more than once when he puzzled her—­“and yet I—­I just can’t make you out, Mr. Bangs.  You say you don’t know anything about money and managin’ money, and yet those Egypt trips of yours must cost a lot of money.  And somebody must manage them.  Somebody must ‘tend to payin’ the bills and the wages and all.  Who does that?”

Galusha smiled.  “Why, I do,” he admitted, “after a fashion.  But it is a very poor fashion.  I almost never—­I think I may safely say never come in from one of those trips without having exceeded the—­ah—­estimate of expenses.  I always exceed it more or less—­ generally more.”

He smiled again.  She looked more puzzled than ever.

“But some one has to pay the extra, don’t they?” she asked.  “Who does pay it, the museum people?”

“Why—­ah—­no, not exactly.  It is—­ah—­ah—­generally provided.  But,” he added, rather hastily, as if afraid she might ask more questions along this line, “if I might make a suggestion, Miss Martha—­Miss Phipps, I mean—­”

“Plain Martha will do well enough.  I think you’re the only one in East Wellmouth that calls me anything else.  Of course you can make a suggestion.  Go ahead.”

“Well—­ah—­well, Miss Phipps—­ah—­Miss Martha, since you permit me to call you so. . . .  What is it?”

“Oh, nothin’, nothin’.  I was goin’ to say that the ‘Miss’ wasn’t necessary, but never mind.  Go on.”

“Well—­ah—­Mar—­ah—­Miss Martha, I was about to suggest that you tell me what you intended telling me.  I am very anxious to help—­ ah—­even if I can’t, you know.  Only I beg of you not to think I am actuated by idle curiosity.”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Even if you were I don’t know that I shouldn’t want to tell you, just the same,” she observed.  “The fact is I’ve just got to talk this over with some one.  Mr. Bangs, I am so worried I don’t know what to do.  It is a money matter, of course, that’s worryin’ me, an investment father made a little while before he died.  Mr. Bangs, I don’t suppose it’s likely that you ever heard of the Wellmouth Development Company?  No, of course you haven’t.”

And yet, as she looked into her lodger’s face, she was surprised at its expression.