A vague idea that Miranda had arrived at great honor had penetrated poor “Marm Bony’s” bewildered brain, and a fancy suddenly seized her that Miranda was the unscrupulous Marie Louise who had supplanted her as Napoleon’s wife, and she hobbled out of the room in great agitation and wrath, her peacock-feathers waving wildly in the air.  She returned in a few minutes, however, and whispered to Miranda that, “as Napoleon wa’n’t jest what he’d ought to be anyway, mebbe they’d better make up.”  To which proposition Miranda assented gravely, holding the wrinkled, trembling old hand tenderly in hers.

Cap’n ’Kiah felt it incumbent upon him to lead the conversation, being modestly conscious of his social gifts.

He had been a ship-owner, and very well-to-do, until in his old age he was robbed of all his property by a younger brother whom he had brought up and cared for as a son.  But the old man had brought to this low level of society to which he had sunk a cheerful philosophy and a grim humor for which many a successful man might well have given all his possessions.

“Rich and poor, there’s a sight of human nater about us all, though there ain’t no use denyin’ that some has more than others,” remarked Cap’n ’Kiah sententiously.  “And whether riches or poverty brings it out the strongest it’s hard tellin’.”

“I’ve always thought I might never have found out that I had medicle tarlunt if I’d been rich,” said Dr. Pingree meditatively.  The little man had “taken up doctorin’ out of his own head,” as he expressed it, after finding that shoemaking and tin-peddling did not satisfy his ambition, and was the inventor and sole proprietor of an infallible medicine, known as the “Universal Pain-Exterminator.”  The jokers dubbed it “Health-Exterminator,” but almost all Welby took it,—­they must take something in the spring,—­and the little doctor, who had a soul far above thoughts of sordid gain, never expected to be paid for it, which made it very popular.  It couldn’t kill one, being made of simplest roots and herbs; and if one should be cured, how very pleasant it would be to think that it was without cost!

“Sure enough, doctor, mebbe you never would,” said the captain.  “And I suppose the innercent satisfaction you’ve got a-makin’ them medicines is as great as you could ‘a’ got out of riches, and without the worry and care of riches, too.”

“Not to mention the good done to my fellow-creturs,” said the little doctor.

“Jest as you say, the good done to your fellow-creturs not bein’ worth mentionin’” said Cap’n ’Kiah, with a grave simplicity that disarmed suspicion.  “There ain’t no denyin’ that poverty is strength’nin’ to the faculties.”

“Don’t give me nothin’ more strength’nin than riches in mine,” said Uncle Peter Henchman, who boasted great wisdom and experience, based mysteriously on the possession of a wooden leg.  “I’ve been in this world up’ards of seventy years, forty-five of it a-walkin’ on a wooden leg, and I hain’t never seen that poverty was anything but a curse.”