“Yes, madam,” said Galusha, politely but shakily lifting the brown derby, “here I am.”

The woman started violently, but she did not run nor scream.

“My heavens and earth!” she exclaimed.  Then, peering forward, she stared at the dripping apparition which had appeared to her from the fog and rain.

“Here I am, madam,” repeated Mr. Bangs.

The woman nodded.  She was middle-aged, with a pleasant face and a figure of the sort which used to be called “comfortable.”  Her manner of looking and speaking were quick and businesslike.

“Yes,” she said, promptly, “I can see you are there, so you needn’t tell me again.  Why are you there and who are you?”

Galusha’s head was spinning dizzily, but he tried to make matters clear.

“My name is—­is—­ Dear me, how extraordinary!  I seem to have forgotten it.  Oh, yes, it is Bangs—­that is it, Bangs.  I heard you calling me, so—­”

“Heard me calling you?”

“Yes.  I—­I came down to the hotel—­the rest—­Rest—­that hotel over there.  It was closed.  I sat down upon the porch, for I have been ill recently and I—­ah—­tire easily.  So, as I say—­”

The woman interrupted him.  She had been looking keenly at his face as he spoke.

“Come in.  Come into the house,” she commanded, briskly.

Mr. Bangs took a step toward her.  Then he hesitated.

“I—­I am very wet, I’m afraid,” he said.  “Really, I am not sure that—­”

“Rubbish!  It’s because you are wet—­wet as a drowned rat—­that I’m askin’ you to come in.  Come now—­quick.”

Her tone was not unkind, but it was arbitrary.

Galusha made no further protest.  She held the door open and he preceded her into a room, then into another, this last evidently a sitting room.  He was to know it well later; just now he was conscious of little except that it was a room—­and light—­and warm—­ and dry.

“Sit down!” ordered his hostess.

Galusha found himself standing beside a couch, an old-fashioned sofa.  It tempted him—­oh, how it tempted him!—­but he remembered the condition of his garments.

“I am very wet indeed,” he faltered.  “I’m afraid I may spoil your—­ your couch.”

“Sit down!”

Galusha sat.  The room was doing a whirling dervish dance about him, but he still felt it his duty to explain.

“I fear you must think this—­ah—­very queer,” he stammered.  “I realize that I must seem—­ah—­perhaps insane, to you.  But I have, as I say, been ill and I have walked several miles, owing to—­ah—­ mistakes in locality, and not having eaten for some time, since breakfast, in fact, I—­”

“Not since breakfast?  Didn’t you have any dinner, for mercy sakes?”

“No, madam.  Nor luncheon.  Oh, it is quite all right, no one’s fault but my own.  Then, when I found the—­the hotel closed, I—­I sat down to rest and—­and when I heard you call my name—­”