On Wednesday afternoons our boarder came home
early.
I clapped my hat tightly on my head and ground my teeth.
"Confound that boarder!" I thought. "He has been fooling with the
anchor. He always said it was of no use, and taking advantage of
my absence, he has hauled it up, and has floated away, and has
gone--gone with my wife and my home!"
Euphemia and "Rudder Grange" had gone off together--where I knew
not,--and with them that horrible suggester!
I ran wildly along the bank. I called aloud, I shouted and hailed
each passing craft--of which there were only two--but their crews
must have been very inattentive to the woes of landsmen, or else
they did not hear me, for they paid no attention to my cries.
I met a fellow with an axe on his shoulder. I shouted to him
before I reached him:
"Hello! did you see a boat--a house, I mean,--floating up the
river?"
"A boat-house?" asked the man.
"No, a house-boat," I gasped.
"Didn't see nuthin' like it," said the man, and he passed on, to
his wife and home, no doubt. But me! Oh, where was my wife and my
home?
I met several people, but none of them had seen a fugitive canal-
boat.
How many thoughts came into my brain as I ran along that river
road! If that wretched boarder had not taken the rudder for an
ironing table he might have steered in shore! Again and again I
confounded--as far as mental ejaculations could do it--his
suggestions.
I was rapidly becoming frantic when I met a person who hailed me.
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