“New one, ain’t it?” inquired Raish.

“Yes, quite new.  My other blew out of the car window.  I bought this one at a small shop near the station in Boston.  I’m afraid it wasn’t a very good shop, but I was in a great hurry.”

“Where was you comin’ from when your other one blew away?”

“From the mountains.”

“White Mountains?”

“Yes.”

Raish said that he wanted to know and waited for his passenger to say something more.  This the passenger did not do.  Mr. Pulcifer whistled a bar or two of his “Follies” song and then asked another question.

“You any relation to Josh?” he asked.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Eh?  Oh, that’s all right.  I just asked you if you was a relation of Josh’s—­of Hall’s, I mean, the folks you’re goin’ to see.”

“Oh, no, no.  We are not related.  Merely friends.”

“I see.  I thought there wan’t any Bangses in that family.  His wife was a Cahoon, wan’t she?”

“I—­I beg your pardon?”

“I asked you if she wan’t a Cahoon; Cahoon was her name afore she married Hall, wan’t it?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I’m sure. . . .  Now, really, that’s very funny, very.”

“What’s funny?”

“Why, you see, I—­” Mr. Bangs had an odd little way of pausing in the middle of a sentence and then, so to speak, catching the train of his thought with a jerk and hurrying on again.  “I understood you to ask if she was a—­a cocoon.  I could scarcely believe my ears.  It was funny, wasn’t it?”

Raish Pulcifer thought it was and said so between roars.  His conviction that his passenger was a queer bird was strengthening every minute.

“What’s your line of business, Mr. Bangs?” was his next question.

“I am not a business man.  I am connected with the Archaeological Department of the National Institute at Washington.”

If he had said he was connected with the interior department of a Brontosaurus the statements would have conveyed an equal amount of understanding to the Pulcifer mind.  However, it was a fixed principle with Raish never to admit a lack of knowledge of any subject whatsoever.  So he said: 

“From Washin’ton, eh?  I see.  Yes, yes.  Cal’latin’ to stay here on the Cape long, Mr. Bangs?”

“Why, I don’t know, I’m sure.  I have not been—­ah—­well of late.  The doctors advise rest and—­ah—­outdoor air and all that.  I tried several places, but I didn’t care for them.  The Halls invited me to visit them and so I—­well, I came.”

“Never been here to the Cape afore, then?”

“No.”

“Well, sir, you’ve come to the right place when you came to Wellmouth.  I was born right here in East Wellmouth and I’ve lived here for fifty-two year and if anybody should ask me what I thought of the place I’d tell ’em—­”