From out a large, white place looming with myriad twinkling lights an answering voice cried “Coo-ee!”
“Is it another house?” said Selia. “I dont see no boat.”
“It is the boat,” cried the horse’s man.
Lo! on the river’s edge was a great boat like a steamer, bedecked with fairy lamps, and at the sound of our hero’s arrival many voices noised out and forms were seen on the deck. Never had Selia beheld such a vision as this grand boat.
“Well, it is just like a house,” cried she.
“It is a houseboat,” said Harold, “for I read it up in an etiquette book.”
Oh how Selia laughed to hear this! “So [130] ]that is where all your stiff new ways come from, is it!” jested she, though not so coyly as she would, as her horse was sipping a little of the river, and it was hard to sit on it so sloping.
“Ha, welcome!” the voice of the Countess was then heard. “Come aboard, pray! We were expecting you to supper, but still, better late than never.”
So Selia dropped from the horse, jolting herself a good bit, and together with Mr. Withersq mounted a small ladder from the river’s edge up the side of this magnificent boat, and so arrived safe on the deck, at which a throng, bobbing up from all directions, seized on them with merry hand shakings, and cooings of delight, for they had been given up, and their arrival proved a welcome diversion, and Lipstick barked madly his eyes more polished than ever. The Countess who was in a tight dress of black beads sewn on stuff like [131] ]a serpent grasped warmly their hands and seemed more glad than before for no doubt their fame had spread more and so she thought them worth her while.
“Let me introduce you to the folk” she said kindly, motioning to the group of about six behind her.