“Mr. Bangs!” screamed Primmie.  “Mr. Bangs, be you layin’ down?  You ain’t asleep, be you, Mr. Bangs?”

If he had been as sound asleep as Rip Van Winkle that whoop would have aroused him.  He hastened to assure the whooper that he was awake and afoot.

“Um-hm,” said Primmie, “I’m glad of that.  If you’d been layin’ down I wouldn’t have woke you up for nothin’.  But I want to ask you somethin’, Mr. Bangs.  Had you just as soon answer me somethin’ if I ask it of you, had you, Mr. Bangs?”

“Yes, Primmie.”

“Just as soon’s not, had you?”

“Yes, quite as soon.”

“All right.  Then I—­I . . .  Let me see now, what was it I was goin’ to ask?  Zach Bloomer, stop your makin’ faces, you put it all out of my head.  It’s all right, Mr. Bangs, I’ll think of it in a minute.  Oh, you’re comin’ down, be you?”

Galusha was coming down.  It seemed to be the advisable thing to do.  Miss Cash was doing her “thinking” at the top of her lungs and the process was trying to one with uneasy nerves.  He entered the sitting room.  Primmie was there, of course, and with her was a little, thin man, with a face sunburned to a bright, “boiled-lobster” red, and a bald head which looked amazingly white by contrast, a yellowish wisp of mustache, and an expression of intense solemnity, amounting almost to gloom.  He was dressed in the blue uniform of the lighthouse service and a blue cap lay on the table beside him.

“Mr. Bangs,” announced Primmie, “this is Mr. Zach Bloomer.  Zach, make you acquainted with Mr. Bangs, the one I was tellin’ you about.  Mr.—­Mr.—­ Oh, my savin’ soul, what is your first name, Mr. Bangs?”

“Galusha, Primmie.  How do you do, Mr. Bloomer?”

The little man rose upon a pair of emphatically bowed legs and shook hands.  “I’m pretty smart,” he observed, in a husky voice.  Then he sat down again.  Galusha, after waiting a moment, sat down also.  Primmie seemed to be wrestling with a mental problem, but characteristically she could not wrestle in silence.

“What was it I wanted to ask you, Mr. Bangs?” she said.  “I snum I can’t think!  Zach, what was it I wanted to ask Mr. Bangs?”

Mr. Bloomer paid not the slightest attention to the question.  His sad blue eye was fixed upon vacancy.

“Galushy—­Galushy,” he said, huskily.  “Huh!”

Galusha was, naturally, rather startled.

“Eh?  I—­ah—­beg your pardon,” he observed.

“I was thinkin’ about names,” explained Mr. Bloomer.  “Queer things, names are, ain’t they?  Zacheus and Galushy. . . .  Godfreys!”

He paused a moment and then added: 

     “’Zacheus he
       Did climb a tree
       His Lord to see.’

Well, if he wan’t any taller’n I be he showed good jedgment. . . . 
Zacheus and Galushy and Primrose! . . .  Godfreys!”

Primmie was shocked.  “Why, Zach Bloomer!” she exclaimed.  “The idea of your talkin’ so about a person’s name you never met but just now in your lifetime.”