[CHAPTER IV]
LEASING A HOUSE-BOAT
The preceding summer, while camping out on Fox Island—or Harry’s Island, as they called it now—the boys had made the acquaintance of the Floating Artist. He had appeared one day in his house-boat, the Jolly Roger, in which he was cruising down the Hudson, sketching as he went. His real name was Forbes Cole, a name of much importance in the art world, as the boys discovered later on. He had proved an agreeable acquaintance, and when camp had been broken the three boys, together with Harry Emery, the daughter of the school principal, had voyaged with him as far as New York.
Mr. Cole lived in a rather imposing white stone house within sight of the Park. The entrance was on the level with the sidewalk. Bay-trees in green tubs flanked the door which was guarded by a bronze grilling. The three boys were admitted by a uniformed butler and conducted into a tiny white-and-gold reception-room. As the heavy curtain fell again at the doorway after the retreating servant the visitors gazed at each other with awed surprise. Chub pretended to be fearful of trusting his weight to the slender chairs, and all three were grinning and giggling when the man appeared again, suddenly and noiselessly. Down a marble-tiled hall carpeted with narrow Oriental rugs in dull colors they were led to an elevator. When they were inside, the butler touched a button and the tiny car, white-and-gold like the reception-room, shot up past two floors and stopped, apparently of its own volition, at the third, and the boys emerged to find themselves [in a great studio] that evidently occupied the whole fourth floor of the house.
“Talk about your Arabian Nights!” murmured Chub in Roy’s ear.
The grating closed quietly behind them, the car disappeared and they stood looking about them in bewilderment and pleasure. So far as they could see the big apartment was empty of any persons save themselves, but they couldn’t be certain of that for there were shadowy recesses where the white light from the big skylights didn’t penetrate, and a balcony of dark, richly carved oak, screened and curtained, stretched across the front end of the studio.
