in't my fault. He's my cousin, all right, and his name's Hank
Schmults, but the sooner you box that fact up in your forgetory, the
smoother 'twill be for yours drearily, Peter T. Brown. He's to be Mr.
Booth Montague, the celebrated English poet, so long's he hangs out at
the Old Home; and he's to hang out here until--well, until I can dope
out a way to get rid of him."

We didn't say nothing for a minute--just thought. Then Jonadab says,
kind of puzzled: "What makes you call him a poet?" he says.

Peter answered pretty snappy: "'Cause there's only two or three jobs
that a long-haired image like him could hold down," he says. "I'd call
him a musician if he could play 'Bedelia' on a jews'-harp; but he
can't, so's he's got to be a poet."

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 follering
morning, when the celebrated Booth Montague come sailing into the dining
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, introducing 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 just pie for him.

And 'twas pie for Maudina, too. Being, as I said, kind of green
concerning men folks, and likewise taking to poetry like a cat to fish,
she just fairly gushed over this fraud. She'd reel off a couple of
fathom of verses from fellers named Spencer or Waller, or such 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 first mark.

Jonadab and me got worried. We see how things was going, and we didn't
like it. Stumpton was having too good a time to notice, going after
"Labrador mack'rel" and so on, and Peter T. was too busy steering
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 ro