"We shouldn't want to live in
it, if it were."
"You are going to live in it?" said the man.
"Yes," said Euphemia.
"Oh!" said the man, and he took our trunks on board, without
another word.
It was not very easy for him to get the trunks into our new home.
In fact it was not easy for us to get there ourselves. There was a
gang-plank, with a rail on one side of it, which inclined from the
shore to the deck of the boat at an angle of forty-five degrees,
and when the man had staggered up this plank with the trunks
(Euphemia said I ought to have helped him, but I really thought
that it would be better for one person to fall off the plank than
for two to go over together), and we had paid him, and he had
driven away in a speechless condition, we scrambled up and stood
upon the threshold, or, rather, the after-deck of our home.
It was a proud moment. Euphemia glanced around, her eyes full of
happy tears, and then she took my arm and we went down stairs--at
least we tried to go down in that fashion, but soon found it
necessary to go one at a time. We wandered over the whole extent
of our mansion and found that our carpenter had done his work
better than the woman whom we had engaged to scrub and clean the
house. Something akin to despair must have seized upon her, for
Euphemia declared that the floors looked dirtier than on the
occasion of her first visit, when we rented the boat.
But that didn't discourage us. We felt sure that we should get it
clean in time.
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