Galusha smiled and said he never had.  Primmie, who had been silent for almost three minutes, could remain so no longer.

“I think Solomon would be the right name for you, Mr. Bangs,” she cried, enthusiastically.  “You know such a terrible lot—­about some kinds of things.”  This last a hasty addition.

Zach snorted.  “Solomon!” he repeated.  “Dan Beebe—­Ras Beebe’s cousin over to Trumet—­named his boy Solomon, and last week they took the young-one up to the State home for feeble-minded.  What name would you pick out of the Bible for yourself, Mr. Bangs?”

It was then that Galusha made the reply to which reference has been made.  His smile changed and became what Primmie described as “one of his one-sided ones.”

“Ah—­um—­well—­Ananias, perhaps,” he said, and walked away.

Zach and Miss Cash stared after him.  Of course, it was the latter who spoke first.

“Ananias!” she repeated.  “Why, Ananias was the feller that—­that lied so and was struck down dead.  I remember him in Sunday school.  Him and his wife Sophrony.  Seems to me ’twas Sophrony; it might have been Maria, though.  But, anyhow, they died lyin’.”

“That so?  I thought they lied dyin’.”

“Oh, be still!  But what did Mr. Bangs pick out that name for—­of all names?  Can you tell me that?”

Zacheus could not, of course, nor did he attempt it.  Instead, he rose and gazed sadly at his companion.

“He said it for a joke, Buttercups,” he observed.  “Joke.  You know, a joke.  One of them things that—­ I tell you what:  You look up ‘joke’ in the dictionary and then, after you’ve found out what ’tis, I’ll lend you a patent-medicine almanac with one or two of ’em in it. . . .  Well, I’ve got to be gettin’ under way.  So long, Posy.”

Possibly Primmie might have inquired further into the reasons which led the Phipps’ lodger to select for himself the name of the person who “died lying,” but that very afternoon, while on an errand in the village, she heard the news that Nelson Howard had been offered a position as operator at the Trumet wireless station, had accepted and was already there and at work.  Every professional gossip in East Wellmouth was talking about it, not only because of its interest as a piece of news, but because of the astonishing fact that no one but those intimately interested had previously known of the offer.

“Why in the world,” said Becky Blount, expressing the opinion of what Captain Jethro Hallett would have called her “tribe,” “he felt ’twas necessary to hide it as if ’twas something to be ashamed of, I don’t see.  Most folks would have been proud to be offered such a chance.  But that Nelse Howard’s queer, anyhow.  Stuck-up, I call him; and Lulie Hallett’s the same way.  She nor him won’t have anything to do with common folks in this town.  And it’ll be worse now.”

This was quite untrue, of course, for Lulie and Nelson were extremely friendly with all except the Blounts, Marietta Hoag, and a few more of their kind.  The solid, substantial people in the village liked them, just as they liked and respected Martha Phipps.  These people took pains to congratulate young Howard and to whisper a hope to Lulie that her father’s unreasonable opposition to the former might be lessened by the news of his advancement.