You can see how things went after that. Blueworthy was star boarder at that poorhouse. Mrs Badger was too much interested in spooks and fortunes to think of asking him to work, and if she did hint at such a thing, he'd have another “trance” and see that “man,” and 'twas all off. And we poor fools of selectmen was congratulating ourselves that Ase Blueworthy was doing something toward earning his keep at last. And then--'long in July 'twas--Betsy Mullen died. One evening, just after the Fourth, Deborah and Asaph was in the dining room, figgering out fortunes with a pack of cards, when there comes a knock at the door. The widow answered it, and there was an old chap, dressed in a blue suit, and a stunning pretty girl in what these summer women make believe is a sea-going rig. And both of 'em was sopping wet through, and as miserable as two hens in a rain barrel. It turned out that the man's name was Lamont, with a colonel's pennant and a million-dollar mark on the foretop of it, and the girl was his daughter Mabel. They'd been paying six dollars a day each for sea air and clam soup over to the Wattagonsett House, in Harniss, and either the soup or the air had affected the colonel's head till he imagined he could sail a boat all by his ownty-donty. Well, he'd sailed one acrost the bay and got becalmed, and then the tide took him in amongst the shoals at the mouth of Wellmouth Crick, and there, owing to a mixup of tide, shoals, dark, and an overdose of foolishness, the boat had upset and foundered and the Lamonts had waded half a mile or so to shore. Once on dry land, they'd headed up the bluff for the only port in sight, which was the poorhouse--although they didn't know it. The widow and Asaph made 'em as comfortable as they could; rigged 'em up in dry clothes which had belonged to departed paupers, and got 'em something to eat. The Lamonts was what they called “enchanted” with the whole establishment. “This,” says the colonel, with his mouth full of brown bread, “is delightful, really delightful. The New England hospitality that we read about. So free from ostentation and conventionality.” When you stop to think of it, you'd scurcely expect to run acrost much ostentation at the poorhouse, but, of course, the colonel didn't know, and he praised everything so like Sam Hill, that the widow was ashamed to break the news to him. And Ase kept quiet, too, you can be sure of that. As for Mabel, she was one of them gushy, goo-gooey kind of girls, and she was as struck with the shebang as her dad. She said the house itself was a “perfect dear.”