“I came here on my own responsibility,” he explained.  “Please don’t think that he has the slightest idea I am here.  He is, as you know, the mildest person on earth, but I’m not at all sure he wouldn’t shoot me if he knew what I came to say to you.  Miss Phipps, if you possibly can do so I earnestly hope you will reconsider your answer to Galusha Bangs.  He is very fond of you, he would make you a kind, generous husband, and, honestly, I think you are just the sort of wife he needs.”

She spoke then, not as if she had meant to, but more as if the words were involuntarily forced from her by shock.

“You—­you think I am the sort of wife he needs?” she gasped. “I?”

“Yes, you.  Precisely the sort.”

“For—­for him.  You think so?”

“Yes.  Now, of course, if you do not—­er—­care for him, if you could not think of him as a husband—­oh, hang it, I don’t know how to put it, but you know what I mean.  If you don’t want to marry him then that is your business altogether and you are right in saying no.  But if you should care for him and refused him because you may have thought there was any—­er—­unsuitability—­er—­ unfitness—­oh, the devil, I don’t know what to call it—­if you thought there was too large an element of that in the match, then I beg of you to reconsider, that’s all.  He needs you.”

“Needs me?  Needs me? . . .  Oh—­oh, you must be crazy!”

“Not a bit of it.  He needs you.  You have all the qualities, common sense, practicability, everything he hasn’t got.  It is for his sake I’m asking this, Miss Phipps.  I truly believe you have the making or marring of his future in your hands—­now.  That is why I hope you will—­well, change your mind. . . .  There!  I have said it.  Thank you for listening.  Good-day.”

He turned to the door.  She spoke once more.  “Oh, you must be jokin’!” she cried.  “How can you say such things?  His people—­his family—­”

“Family?  Oh . . . well, I’ll tell you the truth about that.  When he was young he had altogether too much family.  Now he hasn’t any, really—­except myself, and I have expressed my opinion.  Good-by, Miss Phipps.”

He went out.  Martha slowly went back to her rocking-chair and sat down.  A moment later she heard the roar of the engine as the Cabot car got under way.  The sound died away in the distance.  Martha rose and went up the stairs to her own room.  There she sat down once more and thought—­and thought.

Some time later she heard her lodger’s footstep—­how instantly she recognized it—­in the hall and then in his bedroom.  He was in that room but a short time, then she heard him go down the stairs again.  Perhaps ten minutes afterward Primmie knocked.  She wished permission to go down to the village.

“I just thought maybe I’d go down to the meetin’ house,” explained Primmie.  “They’re goin’ to have a Sunday school concert this afternoon at four o’clock.  Zach he said he was cal’latin’ to go.  And besides, Mr. Bangs he give me this letter to leave to the telegraph office, Miss Martha.”