Meanwhile Aunt Betty had been doing some thinking of her own. She loved novelty with all the zest of a girl and she was fond of the water. Mr. Winters’s offer began to seem less absurd. Finally, she remarked:
“Well, dear, you may leave the writing of that note for a time. I’m obliged to go down town on business, this morning, and after my errands are done we will drive to that out-of-the-way place where this house-boat is moored and take a look at it. Are all those letters from your summer-friends? For a small person you have established a big correspondence, but, of course, it won’t last long. Now run and tell Ephraim to get up the carriage. I’ll be ready in twenty minutes.”
Dorothy hastily piled her notes on the wide window-ledge and skipped from the room, clapping her hands and singing as she went. To her mind Mrs. Calvert’s consent to visit the house-boat was almost proof that it would be accepted. If it were—Ah! glorious!
“Ephraim, did you ever live in a house-boat?” she demanded, bursting in upon the old colored coachman, engaged in his daily task of “shinin’ up de harness.”
He glanced at her over his “specs,” then as hastily removed them and stuffed them into his pocket. It was his boast that he could see as “well as evah” and needed no such aids to his sight. He hated to grow old and those whom he served so faithfully rarely referred to the fact.
So Dorothy ignored the “specs,” though she couldn’t help smiling to see one end of their steel frame sticking out from the pocket, while she repeated to his astonished ears her question.
“Evah lib in a house-boat? Evah kiss a cat’s lef’ hind foot? Nebah heered o’ no such contraption. Wheah’s it at—dat t’ing?”
“Away down at some one of the wharves and we’re going to see it right away. Oh! I forget. Aunt Betty wants the carriage at the door in twenty minutes. In fifteen, now, I guess because ‘time flies’ fairly away from me. But, Ephy, dear, try to put your mind to the fact that likely, I guess, maybe, you and I and everybody will go and live on the loveliest boat, night and day, and every day go sailing—sailing—sailing—on pretty rivers, between green banks and heaps of flowers, and——”
Ephraim rose from his stool and waved her away.