But Hank, or Booth, or Montague—whatever his name was—he waved his flipper disdainful. “Nun-nun-nun-no, Petey, my son,” he says, smiling. “It ain't 'how much?' this time. When I heard how you'd rung the bell the first shot out the box and was rolling in coin, I said to myself: 'Here's where the prod comes back to his own.' I've come to live with you, Petey, and you pay the freight.”
Peter jumped out of the chair. “LIVE with me!” he says. “You Friday evening amateur night! It's back to 'Ten Nights in a Barroom' for yours!” he says.
“Oh, no, it ain't!” says Hank, cheerful. “It'll be back to Popper Dillaway and Belle. When I tell 'em I'm your little cousin Henry and how you and me worked the territories together—why—well, I guess there'll be gladness round the dear home nest; hey?”
Peter didn't say nothing. Then he fetched a long breath and motioned with his head to Cap'n Jonadab and me. We see we weren't invited to the family reunion, so we went out and shut the door. But we did pity Peter; I snum if we didn't!
It was most an hour afore Brown come out of that room. When he did he took Jonadab and me by the arm and led us out back of the barn.
“Fellers,” he says, sad and mournful, “that—that plaster cast in a crazy-quilt,” he says, referring to Montague, “is a cousin of mine. That's the living truth,” says he, “and the only excuse I can make is that 'tain'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.