Well, you could have blown me and Jonadab over with a cat’s-paw. We went on our beam ends, so’s to speak. A relation of Peter T.’s; why, if he’d been twice the panorama he was we’d have let him in when he said that. Loud clothes, we figgered, must run in the family. We remembered how Peter was dressed the fust time we met him. “You don’t say!” says I. “Come right up and set down, Mr--Mr.----” “Montague,” says the feller. “Booth Montague. Permit me to present my card.” He dove into the hatches of his checkerboards and rummaged around, but he didn’t find nothin’ but holes, I jedge, because he looked dreadful put out, and begged our pardons five or six times. “Dear me!” says he. “This is embarrassin’. I’ve forgot my cardcase.” We told him never mind the card; any of Peter’s folks was more’n welcome. So he come up the steps and set down in a piazza chair like King Edward perchin’ on his throne. Then he hove out some remarks about its bein’ a nice morning’, all in a condescendin’ sort of way, as if he usually attended to the weather himself, but had been sort of busy lately, and had handed the job over to one of the crew. We told him all about Peter, and Belle, and Ebenezer, and about Stumpton and Maudina. He was a good deal interested, and asked consider’ble many questions. Pretty soon we heard a carriage rattlin’ up the road. “Hello!” says I. “I guess that’s Peter and the rest comin’ now.” Mr. Montague got off his throne kind of sudden. “Ahem!” says he. “Is there a room here where I may--er--receive Mr. Brown in a less public manner? It will be rather a--er--surprise for him, and----” Well, there was a good deal of sense in that. I know ’twould surprise _me_ to have such an image as he was sprung on me without any notice. We steered him into the gents’ parlor, and shut the door. In a minute the horse and wagon come into the yard. Maudina said she’d had a “heavenly” drive, and unloaded some poetry concernin’ the music of billows, and pine trees, and sech. She and her father went up to their rooms, and when the decks was clear Jonadab and me tackled Peter T. “Peter,” says Jonadab, “we’ve got a surprise for you. One of your relations has come.” Brown, he did looked surprised, but he didn’t act as he was any too joyful. “Relation of _mine_?” says he. “Come off! What’s his name?” We told him Montague, Booth Montague. He laffed. “Wake up and turn over,” he says. “They never had anything like that in my fam’ly. Booth Montague! Sure ’twa’n’t Algernon Coughdrops?” We said no, ’twas Booth Montague, and that he was waitin’ in the gents’ parlor. So he laffed again, and said somethin’ about sendin’ for Laura Lean Jibbey, and then we started. The checkerboard feller was standin’ up when we opened the door. “Hello, Petey!” says he, cool as a cucumber, and stickin’ out a foot and a ha’f of wrist with a hand at the end of it.