“No; I mean after they’re boiled.  It’s to have ’em come on the table in cuffs and collars.  Lace around their necks, you know.”

“And gloves?”

“No, not any gloves.  We had lobsters to-day at Mrs. Foster’s, and you ought to have seen ’em.”

“Dabney Kinzer, it’s time you went to school again.”

“I’m going in a few days.”

“Going?  Do you mean you’re going away somewhere?”

“Ever so far.  Dick Lee’s going with me.”

“I heard about him, but I didn’t know he meant to take you along.  That’s very kind of Dick.  I s’pose you wont speak to common people when you get back.”

“Now, Jenny——­”

“Good afternoon, Dabney.  Perhaps I’ll come over before you go, if it’s only to see that shipwrecked baby.”

A good many of Mrs. Kinzer’s lady friends, young and old, deemed it their duty to come and do that very thing within the next few days.  Then the Sewing Circle took the matter up, and both the baby and its mother were provided for as they never had been before.  It would have taken more languages than two to have expressed the gratitude of the poor Alsatians.  As for the rest of them, out there on the bar, they were speedily taken off and carried “to the city,” none of them being much the worse for their sufferings, after all.  Ham Morris declared that the family he had brought ashore “came just in time to help him out with his fall work, and he didn’t see any charity in it.”

Good for Ham! but Dab Kinzer thought otherwise when he saw how tired Miranda’s husband was on his late return from his second trip across the bay.  Real charity never cares to see itself too clearly.  They were pretty tired, both of them; but the “Swallow” was carefully moored in her usual berth before they left her.  Even then they had a good load of baskets and things to carry with them.

“Is everything out of the locker, Dab?” asked Ham Morris.

“All but the jug.  I say, did you know it was half full?  Would it do any hurt to leave it here?”

“The jug?  No.  Just pour out the rest of the apple-jack, over the side.”

“Make the fish drunk.”

“Well, it sha’n’t bother anybody else if I can help it.”

“Then, if it’s good for water-soaked people, it wont hurt the fish.”

“Empty it, Dab, and come on.  The doctor wasn’t so far wrong, and I was glad to have it with me; but medicine’s medicine, and I only wish people’d remember it.”

The condemned liquor was already gurgling from the mouth of the jug into the salt water, and neither fish nor eel came forward to get a share of it.  When the cork was replaced, the demijohn was set down again in the “cabin,” with no more danger in it for anybody.

Perhaps that was one reason—­that and his weariness—­why Ham Morris did not take the pains even to lock it up.