"Dear me!" he said. "I can't think what became of the other. I'm quite
certain I had two to begin with."

Martha laughed. "I'm certain of that myself," she said. "I never heard
of anybody's buying gloves one at a time."

Her guest smiled. "It might be well for me to buy them that way," he
observed. "My brain doesn't seem equal to the strain of taking care of
more than one."

Primmie and her mistress watched him from the window as he meandered out
of the yard. Primmie made the first remark.

"There now, Miss Martha," she said, "DON'T he look like an undertaker?
Them black clothes and that standin' collar and--and--the kind of still
way he walks--and talks. Wouldn't you expect him to be sayin': 'The
friends of the diseased will now have a chanct to--'"

"Oh, be still, Primmie, for mercy sakes!"

"Yes'm. What thin little legs he's got, ain't he?" Miss Phipps did not
reply to her housemaid's criticism of the Bangs limbs. Instead, she made
an observation of her own.

"Where in the world did he get that ugly, brown, stiff hat?" she
demanded. "It doesn't look like anything that ever grew on land or sea."

Primmie hitched up her apron strings, a habit she had.