Galusha interrupted.

“Please don’t do that,” he said, nervously.

“Hey?  Do what?”

“Ah—­slap my back.  I’d rather you wouldn’t, if you don’t mind.  And—­oh—­I should like to see a—­a cap or something.”

The last sentence was addressed to Mr. Beebe, who cleared his throat importantly.

“Jest a minute, jest a minute,” said Erastus.  “Soon’s I get through waitin’ on these customers I’ll ’tend to you.  Jest a minute.  Yeast cake, did you say, Mrs. Blount?”

“Ohh, pardon me,” faltered Galusha.  “I’ll wait, of course.”

“Wait?” It was Mr. Pulcifer who spoke.  “You don’t have to wait.  I know Ras’s stock as well as he does, pretty nigh.  I’ll show you a cap, Mr. Bangs.”

“Oh—­oh, I couldn’t think of troubling you, really I couldn’t.”

“No trouble at all.  What’s a little trouble amongst neighbors, eh?  And that’s what we are now—­neighbors, eh?  Sure, Mike!  You and me are goin’ to see a lot of each other from now on.  There!  There’s a good, stylish cap, if I do say it.  Try it on?  What’s your size, Perfessor?”

Five minutes later Galusha descended the steps of the Beebe store, wearing a cloth cap which was, to say the very least, out of the ordinary.  Its material was a fuzzy frieze of nondescript colors, a shade of dingy yellow predominating, and its shape was weird and umbrellalike.  With it upon his head little Galusha resembled a walking toadstool—­an unhealthy, late-in-the-season toadstool.

The quartet in the Beebe store watched his departure from the windows.  All were hugely amused, but one, Mr. Pulcifer, was hilarious.

“Haw, haw, haw!” roared Raish.  “Look at him!  Don’t he look like a bullfrog under a lily pad?  Eh?  Don’t he now?  Haw, haw, haw!”

Erastus Beebe joined in the laugh, but he shook his head.

“I’ve had that cap in stock,” he said, “since—­well, since George Cahoon’s son used to come down drummin’ for that Boston hat store, and he quit much as eight year ago, anyhow.  How did he ever come to pick that cap out, Raish?”

Mr. Pulcifer regarded the questioner with scornful superiority.

“Pick it out!” he repeated.  “He never picked it out, I picked it out for him.  You don’t know the first principles of sellin’, Ras.  If you had me to help around here you wouldn’t have so many stickers in your stock.”

Beebe, gazing after the retreating figure of Mr. Bangs, sniffed.

“If I had your brass, Raish,” he observed, calmly, “I’d sell it to the junk man and get rich.  Well, maybe I won’t have so many stickers, as you call ’em, if that little critter comes here often.  What’s the matter with him; soft in the head?”

“Isn’t this his hat—­the one he wore when he came in here?” queried Mrs. Jubal Doane, one of the two customers.

Mr. Beebe picked it up.  “Guess so,” he replied.  “Humph!  I’ve seen that hat often enough, too.  Used to belong to Cap’n Jim Phipps, that hat did.  Seen him wear it a hundred times.”