In Deacon Brainerd’s cottage, the discussion was concerning Agatha’s lack of vanity; a virtue not very common at that time among the women of this busy seaport.

“For a woman so handsome,” the good deacon was saying “(and I think I can safely call her the finest-featured woman who ever trod these streets), she showed as little interest in dress as anyone I ever knew.  Calico at home and calico at church, yet she looked as much of a lady in her dark-sprigged gowns as Mrs. Webster in her silks or Mrs. Parsons in her thousand-dollar sealskin.”

As this was a topic within the scope of his eldest daughter’s intelligence she at once spoke up:  “I never thought she needed to dress so plainly.  I don’t believe in such a show of poverty myself.  If one is too poor to go decent, all right; but they say she had more money than most anyone in town.  I wonder who is going to get the benefit of it?”

“Why, Philemon, of course; that is, as long as he lives.  He doubtless had the making of it.”

“Is it true that he’s gone clean out of his head since her death?” interposed a neighbour who had happened in.

“So they say.  I believe widow Jones has taken him into her house.”

“Do you think,” asked a second daughter with becoming hesitation, “that he had anything to do with her death?  Some of the neighbours say he struck her while in one of his crazy fits, while others declare she was killed by some stranger, equally old and almost as infirm.”

“We won’t discuss the subject,” objected the deacon.  “Time will show who robbed us of the greatest-hearted and most capable woman in these parts.”

“And will time show who killed Batsy?” It was a morsel of a girl who spoke; the least one of the family, but the brightest.  “I’m sorry for Batsy; she always gave me cookies when I went to see Mrs. Webb.”

“Batsy was a good girl for a Swede,” allowed the deacon’s wife, who had not spoken till now.  “When she first came into town on the spars of that wrecked ship we all remember, there was some struggle between Agatha and me as to which of us should have her.  But I didn’t like the task of teaching her the name of every pot and pan she had to use in the kitchen, so I gave her up to Agatha; and it was fortunate I did, for I’ve never been able to understand her talk to this day.”

“I could talk with her right well,” lisped the little one.  “She never called things by their Swedish names unless she was worried; and I never worried her.”

“I wonder if she would have worshipped the ground under your feet, as she did that under Agatha’s?” asked the deacon, eying his wife with just the suspicion of a malicious twinkle in his eye.

“I am not the greatest-hearted and most capable woman in town,” retorted his wife, clicking her needles as she went on knitting.