The house was full of comp’ny, and more kept coming all the time.  Swells! don’t talk!  We felt ’bout as much at home as a cow in a dory, but we was there ’cause Ebenezer had asked us to be there, so we kept on the course and didn’t signal for help.  Travelling through the rooms down stairs where the folks was, was a good deal like dodging icebergs up on the Banks, but one or two noticed us enough to dip the colors, and one was real sociable.  He was a kind of slow-spoken city-feller, dressed as if his clothes was poured over him hot and then left to cool.  His last name had a splice in the middle of it—­’twas Catesby-Stuart.  Everybody—­that is, most everybody—­called him “Phil.”

Well, sir, Phil cottoned to Jonadab and me right away.  He’d get us, one on each wing, and go through that house asking questions.  He pumped me and Jonadab dry about how we come to be there, and told us more yarns than a few ’bout Dillaway, and how rich he was.  I remember he said that he only wished he had the keys to the cellar so he could show us the money-bins.  Said Ebenezer was so just—­well, rotten with money, as you might say, that he kept it in bins down cellar, same as poor folks kept coal—­gold in one bin, silver half-dollars in another, quarters in another, and so on.  When he needed any, he’d say to a servant:  “James, fetch me up a hod of change.”  This was only one of the fish yarns he told.  They sounded kind of scaly to Jonadab and me, but if we hinted at such a thing, he’d pull himself together and say:  “Fact, I assure you,” in a way to freeze your vitals.  He seemed like such a good feller that we didn’t mind his telling a few big ones; we’d known good fellers afore that liked to lie—­gunners and such like, they were mostly.

Somehow or ’nother Phil got Cap’n Jonadab talking “boat,” and when Jonadab talks “boat” there ain’t no stopping him.  He’s the smartest feller in a cat-boat that ever handled a tiller, and he’s won more races than any man on the Cape, I cal’late.  Phil asked him and me if we’d ever sailed on an ice-boat, and, when we said we hadn’t he asks if we won’t take a sail with him on the river next morning.  We didn’t want to put him to so much trouble on our account, but he said:  “Not at all.  Pleasure’ll be all mine, I assure you.”  Well, ’twas his for a spell—­but never mind that now.

He introduced us to quite a lot of the comp’ny—­men mostly.  He’d see a school of ’em in a corner, or under a palm tree or somewheres, and steer us over in that direction and make us known to all hands.  Then he begin to show us off, so to speak, get Jonadab telling ’bout the boats he’d sailed, or something like it—­ and them fellers would laugh and holler, but Phil’s face wouldn’t shake out a reef:  he looked solemn as a fun’ral all the time.  Jonadab and me begun to think we was making a great hit.  Well, we was, but not the way we thought.  I remember one of the gang gets Phil to one side after a talk like this and whispers to him, laughing like fun.  Phil says to him:  “My dear boy, I’ve been to thousands of these things—­” waving his flipper scornful around the premises—­” and upon honor they’ve all been alike.  Now that I’ve discovered something positively original, let me enjoy myself.  The entertainment by the Heavenly Twins is only begun.”