more'n three hundred dollars, and I loaned Thankful four hundred on
it years ago, and the mortgage fell due last September. Not a cent of
principal, interest, nor rent have I got since. Whether he goes to the
poorhouse or not, he goes out of that house of mine to-morrer. A man
can smite me on one cheek and maybe I'll turn t'other, but when, after
I HAVE turned it, he finds fault 'cause my face hurts his hand, then I
rise up and quit; you hear ME!"

Nobody could help hearing him, unless they was deefer than the feller
that fell out of the balloon and couldn't hear himself strike, so all
hands agreed that sending Asaph Blueworthy to the poorhouse would be a
good thing. 'Twould be a lesson to Ase, and would give the poorhouse one
more excuse for being on earth. Wellmouth's a fairly prosperous town,
and the paupers had died, one after the other, and no new ones had come,
until all there was left in the poorhouse was old Betsy Mullen, who was
down with creeping palsy, and Deborah Badger, who'd been keeper ever
since her husband died.

The poorhouse property was valuable, too, specially for a summer
cottage, being out on the end of Robbin's Point, away from the town, and
having a fine view right across the bay. Zoeth Tiddit was a committee
of one with power from the town to sell the place, but he hadn't found
a customer yet. And if he did sell it, what to do with Debby was more
or less of a question. She'd kept poorhouse for years, and had no other
home nor no relations to go to. Everybody liked her, too--that is,
everybody but Cap'n Benijah. He was down on her 'cause she was a
Spiritualist and believed in fortune tellers and such. The cap'n, bein'
a deacon of the Come-Outer persuasion, was naturally down on folks who
wasn't broad-minded enough to see that his partic'lar crack in the roof
was the only way to crawl through to glory.