At first he chose the loneliness.  As a matter of fact, his morning’s exercise had fatigued him somewhat and he went up to his room with the intention of taking a nap.  But, before lying down, he seated himself in the rocker by the window and looked out over the prospect of hills and hollows, the little village, the pine groves, the shimmering, tumbling sea, and the blue sky with its swiftly moving white clouds, the latter like bunches of cotton fluff.  The landscape was bare enough, perhaps, but somehow it appealed to him.  It seemed characteristically plain and substantial and essential, like—­well, like the old Cape Cod captains of bygone days who had spent the dry land portion of their lives there and had loved to call it home.  It was American, as they were, American in the old-fashioned meaning of the word, bluff, honest, rugged, real.  Galusha Bangs had traveled much, he loved the out of the way, the unusual.  It surprised him therefore to find how strongly this commonplace, ’longshore spot appealed to his imagination.  He liked it and wondered why.

Of course the liking might come from the contrast between the rest and freedom he was now experiencing and the fevered chase led him at the mountain hotel where Mrs. Worth Buckley and her lion-hunting sisters had their habitat.  Thought of the pestilential Buckley female set him to contrasting her affectations with the kind-hearted and wholehearted simplicity of his present hostess, Miss Martha Phipps.  It was something of a contrast.  Mrs. Buckley was rich and sophisticated and—­in her own opinion—­cultured to the highest degree.  Now Miss Phipps was, in all probability, not rich and she would not claim wide culture.  As to her sophistication—­ well, Galusha gave little thought to that, in most worldly matters he himself was unsophisticated.  However, he was sure that he liked Miss Phipps and that he loathed Mrs. Buckley.  And he liked East Wellmouth, bareness and bleakness and lonesomeness and all.  He rather wished he were going to stay there for a long time—­weeks perhaps, months it might be; that is, of course, provided he could occupy his present quarters and eat at the Phipps’ table.  If he could do that why—­why . . . humph!

Instead of lying down he sat by that window for more than half an hour thinking.  He came out of his reverie slowly, gradually becoming conscious of a high-pitched conversation carried on downstairs.  He had left his chamber door open and fragments of this conversation came up the staircase.  It was Primmie’s voice which he heard most frequently and whatever words he caught were hers.  There was a masculine grumble at intervals but this was not understandable on the second floor.

“Now I know better. . . .  My savin’ soul, how you do talk, Zach Bloomer! . . .  And I says to her, says I, ‘Miss Martha,’ I says. . . .  My Lord of Isrul! . . .”

These were some of the “Primmieisms” which came up the staircase.  Galusha rose to close his door but before he could accomplish this feat his own name was called.