Page:Frank Stockton - Rudder Grange.djvu/18

Rh "Certainly," said the doctor; "you need make no more rooms at first than you could furnish."

"Then there are no rooms?" said Euphemia.

"No; there is nothing but one vast apartment extending from stem to stern."

"Won't it be glorious!" said Euphemia to me. "We can first make a kitchen, and then a dining-room and a bedroom, and then a parlour—just in the order in which our book says they ought to be furnished."

"Glorious!" I cried, no longer able to contain my enthusiasm; "I should think so. Doctor, where is this canal-boat?"

The doctor then went into a detailed statement.

The boat was stranded on the shore of the Scoldsbury River not far below Ginx's. We knew where Ginx's was, because we had spent a very happy day there during our honeymoon.

The boat was a good one, but superannuated. That, however, did not interfere with its usefulness as a dwelling. We could get it—the doctor had seen the owner—for a small sum per annum, and there was positively no end to its capabilities.

We sat up until twenty minutes past two, talking about that house. We ceased to call it a boat at about a quarter to eleven.

The next day I "took" the boat and paid a month's rent in advance. Three days afterwards we moved into it.

We had not much to move, which was a comfort, looking at it from one point of view. A carpenter had put up two partitions in it, which made three rooms—a kitchen, a dining-room, and a very long bedroom, which was to be cut up into a parlour, study, spare-room, etc., as soon as circumstances should allow, or my salary should be raised.