“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
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