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 round her waist, and she looking up into his eyes
like they were peekholes in the fence 'round paradise. That was enough.
It just simply COULDN'T go any further, so that night me and Jonadab had
a confab up in my room.
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