“Oh, there was a story about that, kind of a pretty story ’twas, too.  ‘Cordin’ to pa’s tell, the fust time Aunt Lucy’s ma—­my great grandmother, and the land knows what her name was, I don’t—­the fust time she went out after the baby was born she went to camp meetin’.  And one of the ministers there he talked some consider’ble about a critter name of Lucifer that was a fallen-down angel, whatever that is.  Well, my great-grandmother she didn’t understand much about what he was talkin’ about—­I cal’late none of ’em did fur’s that goes, and no wonder—­but the name of Lucifer sort of stuck in her head ’cause she thought ’twas kind of pretty.  And when she got back home they told her the baby had fetched loose from the bed where it had been asleep and fell onto the floor and pretty nigh busted itself in two.  And it never hardly cried at all—­was a reg’lar angel they said—­and that made her think about the fallen-down angel she’d just heard tell of to camp meetin’ and its name was Lucifer.  And they hadn’t named the baby yet, so—­”

“I see.  Ha, ha!  Primmie, you are—­well, there aren’t many like you, I’m sure.  Now I must go.  Well, what is it?”

“Oh, nothin’, only I ain’t told you why I think Mr. Bangs may be comin’ down with dropsy.  You see, Aunt Lucy—­this Lucifer one I’ve been tellin’ you about—­she had it.  I only remember her ’long towards her last.  She wan’t heavin’ any teakittles at folks then; my savin’ soul, no!  She used to set in a big rockin’-chair over by the stove and was all puffed-up like—­like a featherbed, you might say; and she’d kind of doze along and doze along and you could holler your head off and she wouldn’t pay no attention, and then she’d kind of wake up, as you might say, and sing out, ’Hey?  What say?’ just like Mr. Bangs, for all the world.  And ’twas dropsy she had, so now you see, don’t you, Miss Martha?”

“Yes, yes, Primmie, I see.  Tut, tut, tut!  You certainly have a great imagination, of its kind.  I shouldn’t worry about Mr. Bangs’ disease, if I were you.  The poor man isn’t really strong yet and he has been runnin’ back and forth to Boston lately altogether too much for his own good.  He is tired and his nerves are tired, too; so we must make it as easy as we can for him, Primmie, you and I.”

“Yes’m.  He’s a good man, ain’t he?”

“Indeed he is!”

“Yes’m.  Even if he is so kind of—­of funny.”

Often, in earlier conversations with her housemaid, Miss Phipps had agreed that her lodger was, to say the least, “funny”; but now she seemed to resent the word.

“Humph!” she observed, crisply, “if he is, I presume likely he has the right to be.  And I know this, if there were more ‘funny’ people like him in this world it would be a big improvement.  Primmie, go and do your sweepin’.”

CHAPTER XIV