“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.