“I should say it was.  About as much change as a plate of ice cream after a cup of hot coffee.  Well, if you’re bound to go, do keep walkin’ fast.  Don’t forget that it’s down to zero or thereabouts; don’t forget that and wander over to the old cemetery and kneel down in front of a slate tombstone and freeze to death.”

“Oh, I shall be all right, Miss Phipps.  Really I shall.  Don’t worry, I beg of you.”

He had begged her not to worry on many other occasions and she had been accustomed to answer him in a manner half joking and half serious.  But this time she did not answer at all for a moment, and when she did there was no hint of a joke in her tone.

“No,” she said, slowly.  “I won’t.  I couldn’t, I guess.  Don’t seem as if I could carry any more worries just now, any more than I am carryin’, I mean.”

She sighed as she said it and he looked at her in troubled alarm.

“Oh, dear me!” he exclaimed.  “I—­I’m so sorry.  Sorry that you are worried, I mean.  Is there anything I can do to—­to—­ I should be very glad to help in any way if—­”

He was hesitating, trying to say the right thing and very fearful of saying too much, of seeming to be curious concerning her personal affairs, when she interrupted him.  She was standing by the kitchen door, with one hand upon the knob, and she spoke without looking at him.

“There is nothin’ you or anybody can do,” she said.  “And there isn’t a single bit of use talkin’ about it.  Trot along and have your walk, Mr. Bangs.  And don’t pay any attention to what I said.  It was just silliness.  I get a little nervous, sometimes, but that’s no reason for my makin’ other people that way.  Have a good walk.”

He did not have a very good walk and his thoughts while walking were not as closely centered about ancient inscriptions, either Egyptian or East Wellmouthian, as was usually the case upon such excursions.  Miss Martha Phipps was worried, she had said so, herself.  Yes, and now that he thought of it, she looked worried.  She was in trouble of some sort.  A dreadful surmise entered his mind.  Was it possible that he, his presence in her house, was the cause of her worry?  He had been very insistent that she take him as boarder and lodger.  The sum he paid each week was ridiculously small.  Was it possible that, having consented to the agreement, she had found it a losing one and was too kind-hearted and conscientious to suggest a change?  He remembered agreements which he had made, and having made, had hesitated to break, even though they turned out to be decidedly unprofitable and unpleasant.  He had often been talked into doing things he did not want to do, like buying the yellow cap at Beebe’s store.  Perhaps he had talked Miss Phipps into taking him as boarder and lodger and now she was sorry.

By the time Galusha returned from his walk he was in what might be described as a state of mind.