Read Ebook: Rudder Grange by Stockton Frank Richard

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Ebook has 1587 lines and 68184 words, and 32 pages

"Well, no," answered the doctor, "I don't think you could expect that."

"But we can't live on the bare floor," said Euphemia; "our house MUST be furnished."

"Well, then, I suppose this won't do," said the doctor, ruefully, "for there isn't so much as a boot-jack in it. It has most things that are necessary for a boat, but it hasn't anything that you could call house-furniture; but, dear me, I should think you could furnish it very cheaply and comfortably out of your book."

"Very true," said Euphemia, "if we could pick out the cheapest things and then get some folks to buy a lot of the books."

"We could begin with very little," said I, trying hard to keep calm.

"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 parlor--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 here 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 of eleven.

The next day I "took" the boat and paid a month's rent in advance. Three days afterward 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 parlor, study, spare-room, etc., as soon as circumstances should allow, or my salary should be raised. Originally, all the doors and windows were in the roof, so to speak, but our landlord allowed us to make as many windows to the side of the boat as we pleased, provided we gave him the wood we cut out. It saved him trouble, he said, but I did not understand him at the time. Accordingly, the carpenter made several windows for us, and put in sashes, which opened on hinges like the hasp of a trunk. Our furniture did not amount to much, at first. The very thought of living in this independent, romantic way was so delightful, Euphemia said, that furniture seemed a mere secondary matter.

We were obliged indeed to give up the idea of following the plan detailed in our book, because we hadn't the sum upon which the furnishing of a small house was therein based.

"And if we haven't the money," remarked Euphemia, "it would be of no earthly use to look at the book. It would only make us doubt our own calculations. You might as well try to make brick without mortar, as the children of Israel did."

"I could do that myself, my dear," said I, "but we won't discuss that subject now. We will buy just what we absolutely need, and then work up from that."

Acting on this plan, we bought first a small stove, because Euphemia said that we could sleep on the floor, if it were necessary, but we couldn't make a fire on the floor--at least not often. Then we got a table and two chairs. The next thing we purchased was some hanging shelves for our books, and Euphemia suddenly remembered the kitchen things. These, which were few, with some crockery, nearly brought us to the end of our resources, but we had enough for a big easy-chair which Euphemia was determined I should have, because I really needed it when I came home at night, tired with my long day's work at the office. I had always been used to an easy-chair, and it was one of her most delightful dreams to see me in a real nice one, comfortably smoking my pipe in my own house, after eating my own delicious little supper in company with my own dear wife. We selected the chair, and then we were about to order the things sent out to our future home, when I happened to think that we had no bed. I called Euphemia's attention to the fact.

She was thunderstruck.

"I never thought of that," she said. "We shall have to give up the stove."

"Not at all," said I, "we can't do that. We must give up the easy-chair."

"Oh, that would be too bad," said she. "The house would seem like nothing to me without the chair!"

"But we must do without it, my dear," said I, "at least for a while. I can sit out on deck and smoke of an evening, you know."

"Yes," said Euphemia. "You can sit on the bulwarks and I can sit by you. That will do very well. I'm sure I'm glad the boat has bulwarks."

So we resigned the easy-chair and bought a bedstead and some very plain bedding. The bedstead was what is sometimes called a "scissors-bed." We could shut it up when we did not want to sleep in it, and stand it against the wall.

When we packed up our trunks and left the boarding-house Euphemia fairly skipped with joy.

We went down to Ginx's in the first boat, having arranged that our furniture should be sent to us in the afternoon. We wanted to be there to receive it. The trip was just wildly delirious. The air was charming. The sun was bright, and I had a whole holiday. When we reached Ginx's we found that the best way to get our trunks and ourselves to our house was to take a carriage, and so we took one. I told the driver to drive along the river road and I would tell him where to stop.

When we reached our boat, and had alighted, I said to the driver:

"You can just put our trunks inside, anywhere."

The man looked at the trunks and then looked at the boat. Afterward he looked at me.

"That boat ain't goin' anywhere," said he.

"I should think not," said Euphemia. "We shouldn't want to live in it, if it were."

"You are going to live in it?" said the man.

"Yes," said Euphemia.

"Oh!" said the man, and he took our trunks on board, without another word.

It was not very easy for him to get the trunks into our new home. In fact it was not easy for us to get there ourselves. There was a gang-plank, with a rail on one side of it, which inclined from the shore to the deck of the boat at an angle of forty-five degrees, and when the man had staggered up this plank with the trunks , and we had paid him, and he had driven away in a speechless condition, we scrambled up and stood upon the threshold, or, rather, the after-deck of our home.

It was a proud moment. Euphemia glanced around, her eyes full of happy tears, and then she took my arm and we went down stairs--at least we tried to go down in that fashion, but soon found it necessary to go one at a time. We wandered over the whole extent of our mansion and found that our carpenter had done his work better than the woman whom we had engaged to scrub and clean the house. Something akin to despair must have seized upon her, for Euphemia declared that the floors looked dirtier than on the occasion of her first visit, when we rented the boat.

But that didn't discourage us. We felt sure that we should get it clean in time.

Early in the afternoon our furniture arrived, together with the other things we had bought, and the men who brought them over from the steamboat landing had the brightest, merriest faces I ever noticed among that class of people. Euphemia said it was an excellent omen to have such cheerful fellows come to us on the very first day of our housekeeping.

Then we went to work. I put up the stove, which was not much trouble, as there was a place all ready in the deck for the stove-pipe to be run through. Euphemia was somewhat surprised at the absence of a chimney, but I assured her that boats were very seldom built with chimneys. My dear little wife bustled about and arranged the pots and kettles on nails that I drove into the kitchen walls. Then she made the bed in the bed-room and I hung up a looking-glass and a few little pictures that we had brought in our trunks.

Before four o'clock our house was in order. Then we began to be very hungry.

"My dear," said Euphemia, "we ought to have thought to bring something to cook."

"That is very true," said I, "but I think perhaps we had better walk up to Ginx's and get our supper to-night. You see we are so tired and hungry."

"What!" cried Euphemia, "go to a hotel the very first day? I think it would be dreadful! Why, I have been looking forward to this first meal with the greatest delight. You can go up to the little store by the hotel and buy some things and I will cook them, and we will have our first dear little meal here all alone by ourselves, at our own table and in our own house."

So this was determined upon and, after a hasty counting of the fund I had reserved for moving and kindred expenses, and which had been sorely depleted during the day, I set out, and in about an hour returned with my first marketing.

I made a fire, using a lot of chips and blocks the carpenter had left, and Euphemia cooked the supper, and we ate it from our little table, with two large towels for a table-cloth.

It was the most delightful meal I ever ate!

And, when we had finished, Euphemia washed the dishes and then we went on deck, or on the piazza, as Euphemia thought we had better call it, and there we had our smoke. I say WE, for Euphemia always helps me to smoke by sitting by me, and she seems to enjoy it as much as I do.

And when the shades of evening began to gather around us, I hauled in the gang-plank and went to bed.

It is lucky we were tired and wanted to go to bed early, for we had forgotten all about lamps or candles.

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