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 (Euphemia said I ought to have helped him, but I really thought that it would be better for one person to fall off the plank than for two to go over together), 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.
