Mrs. Cliff's Yacht

by Frank R. Stockton

Mrs. Cliff's belief that she must not long delay in selecting some sort of station in life, and endeavoring to live up to it, was soon strengthened by Willy Croup. During the time of the trunk opening, and for some days afterwards, when all her leisure hours were occupied with the contemplation and consideration of her own presents, Willy had been perfectly contented to let things go on in the old way, or any way, but now the incongruity of Mrs. Cliff's present mode of living, and the probable amount of her fortune, began to impress itself upon her.

"It does seem to me," said she, "that it's a sin and a shame that you should be goin' about this house just as you used to do, helpin' me upstairs and downstairs, as if you couldn't afford to hire nobody. You ought to have a girl, and a good one, and for the matter of that, you might have two of 'em, I suppose. And even if it wasn't too much for you to be workin' about when there's no necessity for it, the people are beginnin' to talk, and that ought to be stopped."

"What are they talking about?" asked Mrs. Cliff.

"Well, it's not everybody that's talkin'," returned Willy, "and I guess that them that does gets their opinions from one quarter, but I've heard people say that it's pretty plain that all you got out of that gold mine you spent in buyin' the things you brought home in your trunks; for if you didn't, you wouldn't be livin' like this, helpin' to do your own housework and cookin'."

In consequence of this conversation, a servant-of-all-work was employed; for Mrs. Cliff did not know what she would do with two women until she had made a change in her household arrangements; and with this as a beginning, our good widow determined to start out on her career as a rich woman who intended to enjoy herself in the fashion she liked best.

She sent for Mr. Thompson, the carpenter, and consulted with him in regard to the proposed additions to her house, but when she had talked for a time, she became disheartened. She found that it would be necessary to dig a new cellar close to her present premises; that there would be stones, and gravel, and lime, and sand, and carts and horses, and men, and dirt; and that it would be some months before all the hammering, and the sawing, and the planing, and the plastering, and tinwork could be finished, and all this would be going on under her eye, and close to her ears during those first months in which she had proposed to be so happy in her home. She could not bear to give the word to dig, and pound, and saw. It was not like building a new house, for that would not be near her, and the hub-bub of its construction would not annoy her.

So she determined she would not begin a new dining-room at present. She would wait a little while until she had had some good of her house as it was, and then she would feel better satisfied to live in the midst of pounding, banging, and all-pervading dust; but she would do something. She would have the fence which separated the sidewalk from her front yard newly painted. She had long wanted to have that done, but had not been able to afford it.

But when Mr. Thompson went to look at the fence, he told her that it would be really a waste of money to paint it, for in many places it was old and decayed, and it would be much wiser to put up a new one and paint that.

Again Mrs. Cliff hesitated. If that fence had to be taken down, and the posts dug up, and new posts put in, and the flower-bed which ran along the inside of it destroyed, it would be just as well to wait until the other work began and have it all done at once; so she told Mr. Thompson he need not send a painter, for she would make the old fence do for a while.

Mrs. Cliff sighed a little as the carpenter walked away, but there were other things to do. There was the pasture lot at the rear of her garden, and she could have a cow, and there was the little barn, and she could have a horse. The idea of the horse pleased her more than anything she had yet thought of in connection with her wealth.