“Well, I just knew you couldn’t stand it away from us.  I suppose you’ll want your room back.  Ma, here’s Mr. Wrenn back again—­Mr. Wrenn! Ma!”

“Oh-h-h-h!” sounded Goaty Zapp’s voice, in impish disdain, below.  “Mr. Wrenn’s back.  Hee, hee!  Couldn’t stand it.  Ain’t that like a Yankee!”

A slap, a wail, then Mrs. Zapp’s elephantine slowness on the stairs from the basement.  She appeared, buttoning her collar, smiling almost pleasantly, for she disliked Mr. Wrenn less than she did any other of her lodgers.

“Back already, Mist’ Wrenn?  Ah declare, Ah was saying to Lee Theresa just yest’day, Ah just knew you’d be wishing you was back with us.  Won’t you come in?”

He edged into the parlor with, “How is the sciatica, Mrs. Zapp?”

“Ah ain’t feeling right smart.”

“My room occupied yet?”

He was surveying the airless parlor rather heavily, and his curt manner was not pleasing to the head of the house of Zapp, who remarked, funereally: 

“It ain’t taken just now, Mist’ Wrenn, but Ah dunno.  There was a gennulman a-looking at it just yesterday, and he said he’d be permanent if he came.  Ah declare, Mist’ Wrenn, Ah dunno’s Ah like to have my gennulmen just get up and go without giving me notice.”

Lee Theresa scowled at her.

Mr. Wrenn retorted, “I did give you notice.”

“Ah know, but—­well, Ah reckon Ah can let you have it, but Ah’ll have to have four and a half a week instead of four.  Prices is all going up so, Ah declare, Ah was just saying to Lee T’resa Ah dunno what we’re all going to do if the dear Lord don’t look out for us.  And, Mist’ Wrenn, Ah dunno’s Ah like to have you coming in so late nights.  But Ah reckon Ah can accommodate you.”

“It’s a good deal of a favor, isn’t it, Mrs. Zapp?”

Mr. Wrenn was dangerously polite.  Let gentility look out for the sharp practices of the Yankee.

“Yes, but—­”

It was our hero, our madman of the seven and seventy seas, our revolutionist friend of Istra, who leaped straight from the salt-incrusted decks of his laboring steamer to the musty parlor and declared, quietly but unmovably-practically unmovably—­“Well, then, I guess I’d better not take it at all.”

“So that’s the way you’re going to treat us!” bellowed Mrs. Zapp.  “You go off and leave us with an unoccupied room and—­ Oh!  You poor white trash—­you—­”

“Ma! You shut up and go down-stairs-s-s-s-s!” Theresa hissed.  “Go on.”

Mrs. Zapp wabbled regally out.  Lee Theresa spoke to Mr. Wrenn: 

“Ma ain’t feeling a bit well this afternoon.  I’m sorry she talked like that.  You will come back, won’t you?” She showed all her teeth in a genuine smile, and in her anxiety reached his heart.  “Remember, you promised you would.”

“Well, I will, but—­”

Bill Wrenn was fading, an affrighted specter.  The “but” was the last glimpse of him, and that Theresa overlooked, as she bustlingly chirruped:  “I knew you would understand.  I’ll skip right up and look at the room and put on fresh sheets.”