And a poet he was for the next week or so. Peter drove down to Wellmouth that night and bought some respectable black clothes, and the follerin’ mornin’, when the celebrated Booth Montague come sailin’ into the dinin’ room, with his curls brushed back from his forehead, and his new cutaway on, and his wrists covered up with clean cuffs, blessed if he didn’t look distinguished--at least, that’s the only word I can think of that fills the bill. And he talked beautiful language, not like the slang he hove at Brown and us in the gents’ parlor. Peter done the honors, introducin’ him to us and the Stumptons as a friend who’d come from England unexpected, and Hank he bowed and scraped, and looked absent-minded and crazy--like a poet ought to. Oh, he done well at it! You could see that ’twas jest pie for him. And ’twas pie for Maudina, too. Bein’, as I said, kind of green concernin’ men folks, and likewise takin’ to poetry like a cat to fish, she jest fairly gushed over this fraud. She’d reel off a couple of fathom of verses from fellers named Spencer or Waller, or sech like, and he’d never turn a hair, but back he’d come and say they was good, but he preferred Confucius, or Methuselah, or somebody so antique that she nor nobody else ever heard of ’em. Oh, he run a safe course, and he had _her_ in tow afore they turned the fust mark. Jonadab and me got worried. We see how things was goin’, and we didn’t like it. Stumpton was havin’ too good a time to notice, goin’ after “Labrador mack’rel” and so on, and Peter T. was too busy steerin’ the cruises to pay any attention. But one afternoon I come by the summerhouse unexpected, and there sat Booth Montague and Maudina, him with a clove hitch round her waist, and she lookin’ up into his eyes like they were peekholes in the fence ’round paradise. That was enough. It jest simply _couldn’t_ go any further, so that night me and Jonadab had a confab up in my room. “Barzilla,” says the cap’n, “if we tell Peter that that relation of his is figgerin’ to marry Maudina Stumpton for her money, and that he’s more’n likely to elope with her, ’twill pretty nigh kill Pete, won’t it? No, sir; it’s up to you and me. We’ve got to figger out some way to git rid of the critter ourselves.” “It’s a wonder to me,” I says, “that Peter puts up with him. Why don’t he order him to clear out, and tell Belle if he wants to? She can’t blame Peter ’cause his uncle was father to an outrage like that.” Jonadab looks at me scornful. “Can’t, hey?” he says. “And her high-toned and chummin’ in with the bigbugs? It’s easy to see you never was married,” says he. Well, I never was, so I shet up.