“That’s right,” wheezed Mr. Buffum.  “It’s just as well.”

“The truth is,” said Mrs. Buffum, “that folks made a great fuss about his gettin’ away from here and never bein’ found.  I thought ’twas a good riddance myself, but people seem to think that these crazy critturs are just as much consequence as any body, when they don’t know a thing.  He was always arter our dinner horn, and blowin’, and thinkin’ he was the Angel Gabriel.  Well, it’s a comfort to know he’s buried, and isn’t no more expense.”

“I sh’d like to see some of these crazy people,” said Jim.  “They must be a jolly set.  My ha’r can’t stand any straighter nor it does now, and when you feed the animals in the mornin’, I’d kind o’ like to go round with ye.”

The women insisted that he ought not to do it.  Only those who understood them, and were used to them, ought to see them.

“You see, we can’t give ’em much furnitur’,” said Mrs. Buffum.  “They break it, and they tear their beds to pieces, and all we can do is to jest keep them alive.  As for keepin’ their bodies and souls together, I don’t s’pose they’ve got any souls.  They are nothin’ but animils, as you say, and I don’t see why any body should treat an animil like a human bein.’  They hav’n’t no sense of what you do for ’em.”

“Oh, ye needn’t be afraid o’ my blowin’.  I never blowed about old Tilden, as you call ‘im, an’ I never expect to,” said Jim.

“That’s right,” wheezed Mr. Buffum.  “It’s just as well.”

“Well, I s’pose the Doctor’ll be up in the mornin’,” said Mrs. Buffum, “and we shall clean up a little, and put in new straw, and p’r’aps you can go round with him?”

Mr. Buffum nodded his assent, and after an evening spent in story-telling and chaffing, Jim went to bed upon the shakedown in an upper room to which he was conducted.

Long before he was on his feet in the morning, the paupers of the establishment had been fed, and things had been put in order for the medical inspector.  Soon after breakfast, the Doctor’s crazy little gig was seen ascending the hill, and Mr. Buffum and Jim were at the door when he drove up.  Buffum took the Doctor aside, and told him of Jim’s desire to make the rounds with him.  Nothing could have delighted the little man more than a proposition of this kind, because it gave him an opportunity to talk.  Jim had measured his man when he heard him speak the previous day, and as they crossed the road together, he said:  “Doctor, they didn’t treat ye very well down there yesterday.  I said to myself; ’Jim Fenton, what would ye done if ye had knowed as much as that doctor, an’ had worked as hard as he had, and then be’n jest as good as stomped on by a set o’ fellows that didn’t know a hole in the ground when they seen it?’ and, says I, answerin’ myself, ’ye’d ‘a’ made the fur fly, and spilt blood.’”

“Ah,” responded the Doctor, “Violence resteth in the bosom of fools.”

“Well, it wouldn’t ‘a’ rested in my bosom long.  I’d ‘a’ made a young ’arthquake there in two minutes.”