“You’ve got a terrible mistaken p’int of view, Peter, well-meanin’ as you be,” said Cap’n ‘Kiah, “There’s nothin’ in nater, and, I was a-goin’ to say, in grace, but what you clap your eyes fust onto the contr’y side, and then you’re sure there ain’t nothin’ but a contr’y side.”

“I wish I could see something besides the contr’y side of riches; but I hain’t yet,” said Miranda, with a heavy sigh.

Little Dr. Pingree cast a sidelong look at her, and then adjusted his cravat and considered the effect of the blue roses on his vest.  Was a vision flitting before his eyes of the wagon drawn by gayly-caparisoned steeds and bearing in gilt letters on a red ground the legend, “Dr. Pingree’s Pain-Exterminator, Humanity’s Friend,”—­of his own face, beautified by art, adorning fences and walls above this proud inscription, “The Renowned Inventor of the Universal Pain-Exterminator”?  This fame, the dream of a lifetime, might now be purchased by money.  And he had always admired Miranda.

Miranda caught his glance, and, with the suspicion which wealth had already engendered, divined his thought.  Was there going to be another aspirant for her hand?

“The wind’s a-blowin up; and what a roarin’ the sea does make!” she said hurriedly, to cover her embarrassment.  “The only thing I don’t like about this house is its bein’ so near the sea.  It’s rainin’ hard; and I’m glad of it,” she added, in an undertone, to Mrs. Bemis,—­“for he won’t be so likely to get round here to-night.  Courtin’ is real tryin’.”

“The ocean is a dretful disconserlate-soundin’ cretur,” remarked Uncle Peter lugubriously; “and when you think of the drownded folks she’s got a-rollin’ round in her, ’tain’t no wonder.”

“The ocean’s a useful work o’ nater, and she’s fetched and carried and aimed a livin’ for a good many more’n she’s swallered up,” said Cap’n ’Kiah.

“I expect this world ain’t a vale of tears, nohow,” said Uncle Peter in an aggrieved tone.  “There is folks that knows more’n the hymn-book.”

“Well, it is, and then ag’in it ain’t, jest accordin’ to the way you look at it.  There’s a sight more the matter with folks’s p’int o’ view than there is with the Lord A’mighty’s world.—­Now, Jo, if you’ve got that cretur o’ yourn into ship-shape,—­it always doos seem to me jest like a human cretur that’s got the right p’int o’ view, that fiddle doos,—­jest give it to us lively.”

Jo tuned up, with modest satisfaction, and two or three couples stood up to dance.  Little Dr. Pingree was about to solicit Miranda’s hand for the dance, when there came a knock at the door.

Miranda stuck her knitting-needle through her back-hair in an agitated and expectant manner.  But it was not the lank figure of the book-peddler, her betrothed, that darkened the door.  It was a forlorn woman, dripping with rain, with two small boys clinging to her skirts.

“I suppose poor folks have a right to come in here out of the rain,” she said, advancing to the fire and seating herself with a sullen and dejected aspect.