Mrs. Cliff's Yacht

by Frank R. Stockton

The fact that nobody had ever said that Burke had commanded a vessel, and that Miss Shott had started the belief that Mrs. Cliff was in a rapid decline, entirely escaped the attention of her hearers, so interested were they in the subject of the unworthiness of the fine gentleman at the hotel.

Winter had not yet really set in when George Burke, who had perceived no reason to imagine that he had made a drop in public estimation, felt himself stirred by emotions of triumphant joy. The new building on the corner lot was on the point of completion!

Workmen and master-workmen, mechanics and laborers, had swarmed in, over, and about the new edifice in such numbers that sometimes they impeded each other. Close upon the heels of the masons came the carpenters, and following them the plumbers and the plasterers; while the painters impatiently restrained themselves in order to give their predecessors time to get out of their way.

The walls and ceilings were covered with the plaster which would dry the quickest, and the paper-hangers entered the rooms almost before the plasterers could take away their trowels and their lime-begrimed hats and coats. Cleaners with their brooms and pails jostled the mechanics, as the latter left the various rooms, and everywhere strode Mr. Burke. He had made up his mind that the building must be ready to move into the instant it arrived at its final destination.

It was a very different building from what Mrs. Cliff had proposed to herself when she decided to add a dining-room to her old house. It was so different indeed, that after having gone two or three times to look upon the piles of lumber and stone and the crowds of men, digging, and hammering, and sawing on the corner lot, she had decided to leave the whole matter in the hands of Mr. Burke, the architect, and the contractor. And when Willy Croup endeavored to explain to her what was going on, she always stopped her, saying that she would wait until it was done and then she would understand it.

Mr. Burke too had urged her, especially as the building drew near to completion, not to bother herself in the least about it, but to give him the pleasure of presenting it to her entirely finished and ready for occupancy. So even the painting and paper-hanging had been left to a professional decorator, and Mrs. Cliff assured Burke that she was perfectly willing to wait for the new dining-room until it was ready for her.

This dining-room, large and architecturally handsome, was planned, as has been said, so that one of its doors should fit exactly against the side hall door of the little house, but the other door of the dining-room opened into a wide and elegant hall, at one end of which was a portico and spacious front steps. On the other side of this hall was a handsome drawing-room, and behind the drawing-room and opening into it, an alcove library with a broad piazza at one side of it. Back of the dining-room was a spacious kitchen, with pantries, closets, scullery, and all necessary adjuncts.

In the second and third stories of the edifice were large and beautiful bedrooms, small and neat bedrooms, bath-rooms, servants' rooms, trunk-rooms, and every kind of room that modern civilization demands.

Now that the building was finished, Mr. Burke almost regretted that he had not constructed it upon the top of a hill in order that he might have laid his smooth and slippery timbers from the eminence to the side of Mrs. Cliff's house, so that when all should be ready he could have knocked away the blocks which held the building, so that he could have launched it as if it had been a ship, and could have beheld it sliding gracefully and rapidly from its stocks into its appointed position. But as this would probably have resulted in razing Mrs. Cliff's old house to the level of the ground, he did not long regret that he had not been able to afford himself the pleasure of this grand spectacle.

The night before the day on which the new building was to be moved, the lot next to Mrs. Cliff's house was covered by masons, laborers, and wagons hauling stones, and by breakfast-time the next morning the new cellar was completed.