Page:Frank Stockton - Rudder Grange.djvu/73

Rh or buying a house, and determined to rent a small place in the country, and then, as Euphemia wisely said, if we liked it, we might buy it. After she had dropped her building project she thought that one ought to know just how a house would suit before having it on one's hands.

We could afford something better than a canal-boat now, and therefore we were not so restricted as in our first search for a house. But the one thing which troubled my wife and, indeed, caused me much anxious thought, was that scourge of almost all rural localities—tramps. It would be necessary for me to be away all day—and we could not afford to keep a man—so we must be careful to get a house somewhere off the line of ordinary travel, or else in a well-settled neighbourhood, where there would be someone near at hand in case of unruly visitors.

"A village I don't like," said Euphemia; "there is always so much gossip, and people know all about what you have, and what you do. And yet it would be very lonely, and perhaps dangerous, for us to live off somewhere all by ourselves. And there is another objection to a village. We don't want a house with a small yard and a garden at the back. We ought to have a dear little farm, with some fields for corn, and a cow, and a barn and things of that sort. All that would be lovely. I'll tell you what we want," she cried, seized with a sudden inspiration; "we ought to try to get the end-house of a village. Then our house could be near the neighbours, and our farm could stretch out a little way into the country beyond us. Let us fix our minds upon such a house, and I believe we can get it."

So we fixed our minds, but in the course of a week or two we unfixed them several times to allow the