His smile was so contagious that she laughed again.

“I didn’t mean you were funny to laugh at, but to laugh with,” she said.  “You’re goin’ to have an especially nice walk this mornin’.  It’s such a lovely forenoon I almost wish I was goin’ with you.”

Galusha beamed.  “Why—­why, so do I!” he exclaimed, in delighted surprise.  “Yes, I do, I do, indeed!  Ah—­ah—­why don’t you?”

“Mercy me, I couldn’t think of it!  I must stay here and get to cookin’ or we’ll have no puddin’ to-morrow noon.  I’ll be with you in spirit, as the books say; how will that do?”

Whether or not she was with him in spirit, she was very much in her lodger’s thoughts as he walked down the path to the gate.  It was such a beautiful forenoon, with the first promise of spring in the air, that, instead of starting toward the village, as was his usual custom, he turned in the other direction and strolled toward the lighthouse.  The sea view from the cliff edge should be magnificent on a morning like this.

But it was not of the view, or the beauty of the morning, that he thought as he wandered slowly on.  His mind, for some reason or other, seemed to be filled with the picture of Martha Phipps as she sat in the rocking-chair, with the background of old-fashioned plants and blossoms, and the morning sunshine illumining her pleasant, comely face.  He could visualize every feature of that face, which fact was extremely odd, for it had been many years since he had noticed a female face sufficiently for that face to impress itself upon his memory.  Years and years before Galusha Bangs had been forced to the conclusion that the interest of attractive feminity was not for him and he had accepted the inevitable and never permitted his own interest to stray in that direction.  A few feminine faces he could, of course, recall; the face of his Aunt Clarissa, for instance, and—­dear me, yes! that of the pestiferous Mrs. Worth Buckley, his—­ah—­not his “old man of the sea” exactly, but his equally troublesome, middle-aged woman of the mountains.  Mrs. Buckley had not attracted his notice, she had seized it, served a subpoena upon it, and his provokingly contrary memory persisted in recalling her face, probably because he so earnestly desired to forget it.

But he found a real pleasure in visualizing the face of Miss Martha Phipps.  Her eyes now—­her eyes were—­ah—­um—­they were blue; no, they were gray—­or a sort of gray-blue, perhaps, or even a shade of brown.  But the precise color made no real difference.  It was the way they looked at one, and—­ah—­smiled, so to speak.  Odd, because he had never before realized that one could—­ah—­smile with one’s eyes.  Attractive, too, that smile of hers, the eyes and the lips in combination.  A sort of cheerful, comfortable smile—­yes, and—­ ah—­attractive—­ah—­inviting, as one might say; a homelike smile; that was the word he wanted—­“homelike.”  It had been a long, long time since he had had a home.  As a matter of fact, he had not cared to have one.  A tent in Egypt or Syria, furnished with a mummy or two, and with a few neighborly ruins next door—­this had been his idea of comfort.  It was his idea still, but nevertheless—­