But his clothes—­don’t say a word!  His coat was long and buttoned up tight, so’s you couldn’t tell whether he had a vest on or not—­ though ’twas a safe bet he hadn’t—­and it and his pants was made of the loudest kind of black-and-white checks.  No nice quiet pepper-and-salt, you understand, but the checkerboard kind, the oilcloth kind, the kind that looks like the marble floor in the Boston post-office.  They was pretty tolerable seedy, and so was his hat.  Oh, he was a last year’s bird’s nest now, but when them clothes was fresh—­whew! the northern lights and a rainbow mixed wouldn’t have been more’n a cloudy day ’longside of him.

He run up to the piazza like a clipper coming into port, and he sweeps off that rusty hat and hails us grand and easy.

“Good-morning, gentlemen,” says he.

“We don’t want none,” says Jonadab, decided.

The feller looked surprised.  “I beg your pardon,” says he.  “You don’t want any—­what?”

“We don’t want any ‘Life of King Solomon’ nor ’The World’s Big Classifyers.’  And we don’t want to buy any patent paint, nor sewing machines, nor clothes washers, nor climbing evergreen roses, nor rheumatiz salve.  And we don’t want our pictures painted, neither.”

Jonadab was getting excited.  Nothing riles him wuss than a peddler, unless it’s a woman selling tickets to a church fair.  The feller swelled up until I thought the top button on that thunderstorm coat would drag anchor, sure.

“You are mistaken,” says he.  “I have called to see Mr. Peter Brown; he is—­er—­a relative of mine.”

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 first 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 drove into the hatches of his checkerboards and rummaged around, but he didn’t find nothing but holes, I jedge, because he looked dreadful put out, and begged our pardons five or six times.

“Dear me!” says he.  “This is embarassing.  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 perching on his throne.  Then he hove out some remarks about its being a nice morning, all in a condescending 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 rattling up the road.