There, right at the foot of our back garden, under the willow trees, was the Delaware River, running along, very fast.
I said, "Come on, let's go down to the river, Aunty May." But Aunty Edith said, "First, look at the house."
We went through a little door into another long, narrow, low room, with a window on the towpath and a window on the river, and a queer old-fashioned bureau and two iron beds in it, and a clothes-horse, in one corner, covered with muslin. When you opened one flap of it, it was a closet. This was Aunty Edith and Aunty May's room.
In the other room, with the stovepipe in the middle of it, was a big couch, and that was to be my bed at night. There was a big closet at one end, made out of the place where the steps went up to the attic, and that was where my clothes were to hang. One side of the room had bookshelves, and on the wall were some of Aunty Edith's paintings; and there was a doorway at one end without any door.
I said to Aunty Edith, "How do we get to the river from this house? Do we have to go out of the front door and run down? And where's the stove that the pipe belongs to? Is it in a cellar?" Then both the aunties laughed, and they went to this doorway without any door, and there was a funny thing that looked like a clumsy ladder. Aunty Edith told me those were our best stairs, and that once they were canal boat stairs.
Well, you climbed down them very carefully, for they tipped a little, and you landed on a dark little landing with a door. You opened the door and stepped down a step and there you were in the nicest old kitchen you ever saw!
The top part of the house was wooden, but this under part was of stone and cement, and the walls inside were cement, and the ceiling was just wood with the big floor beams showing through. And there was a door with glass in the top, that you could look through down to the river and the willows; and there was a window with a deep window seat you could sit in and look at the river; then there was a long window at the side, where the outside steps came down from the towpath, and that opened in two halves and had narrow panes of glass. It looked out on a garden.
A big cook-stove, with a kettle steaming on it, was at one end of the room; and a nice big table, and there were some comfortable chairs, and pots and pans hanging over and under the mantel back of the stove.
There was a rug on the floor, and a pantry with lots of good things to eat in it, and a big couch that I sat down on, and looked around.
There was a little place in the wall, too, that had once been a window, but was closed up and made into a little cupboard for dishes.