Other people always say it, they've said it ever since I
can remember. Thank you very much for the cap, Miss Phipps."
He was sunnily cheerful and very grateful. There was not the slightest
resentment because of her interference. And yet if she had not
interfered he would have worn the hideous yellow cap and been as
cheerful under that. Pulcifer had imposed upon him and he realized it,
but he deliberately chose being imposed upon rather than listening to
the Pulcifer conversation. He was certainly a queer individual, this
lodger of hers. A learned man evidently, a man apparently at home and
sure of himself in a world long dead, but as helpless as a child in the
practical world of to-day. She liked him, she could not help liking him,
and it irritated her exceedingly to think that men like Raish Pulcifer
and Erastus Beebe should take advantage of his childlike qualities to
swindle him, even if the swindles were but petty.
"They shan't do it," she told Lulie Hallett, the next morning. "Not if I
can help it, they shan't. Somebody ought to look out for the poor thing,
half sick and with nobody of his own within goodness knows how many
miles. I'll look out for him as well as I can while he's here. My
conscience wouldn't let me do anything else. I suppose if I pick out his
other things the way I picked out that cap the whole of East Wellmouth
will be talkin'; but I can't help it, let 'em.
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