第22章

We held our next business meeting on my houseboat. Brown was opposed at first to my going down to this houseboat at all. He thought that none of us should leave town while the novel was still on hand.

MacShaughnassy, on the contrary, was of opinion that we should work better on a houseboat. Speaking for himself, he said he never felt more like writing a really great work than when lying in a hammock among whispering leaves, with the deep blue sky above him, and a tumbler of iced claret cup within easy reach of his hand. Failing a hammock, he found a deck chair a great incentive to mental labour.

In the interests of the novel, he strongly recommended me to take down with me at least one comfortable deck chair, and plenty of lemons.

I could not myself see any reason why we should not be able to think as well on a houseboat as anywhere else, and accordingly it was settled that I should go down and establish myself upon the thing, and that the others should visit me there from time to time, when we would sit round and toil.

This houseboat was Ethelbertha's idea. We had spent a day, the summer before, on one belonging to a friend of mine, and she had been enraptured with the life. Everything was on such a delightfully tiny scale. You lived in a tiny little room; you slept on a tiny little bed, in a tiny, tiny little bedroom; and you cooked your little dinner by a tiny little fire, in the tiniest little kitchen that ever you did see. "Oh, it must be lovely, living on a houseboat," said Ethelbertha, with a gasp of ecstasy; "it must be like living in a doll's house."Ethelbertha was very young--ridiculously young, as I think I have mentioned before--in those days of which I am writing, and the love of dolls, and of the gorgeous dresses that dolls wear, and of the many-windowed but inconveniently arranged houses that dolls inhabit--or are supposed to inhabit, for as a rule they seem to prefer sitting on the roof with their legs dangling down over the front door, which has always appeared to me to be unladylike: but then, of course, I am no authority on doll etiquette--had not yet, Ithink, quite departed from her. Nay, am I not sure that it had not?

Do I not remember, years later, peeping into a certain room, the walls of which are covered with works of art of a character calculated to send any aesthetic person mad, and seeing her, sitting on the floor, before a red brick mansion, containing two rooms and a kitchen; and are not her hands trembling with delight as she arranges the three real tin plates upon the dresser? And does she not knock at the real brass knocker upon the real front door until it comes off, and I have to sit down beside her on the floor and screw it on again?

Perhaps, however, it is unwise for me to recall these things, and bring them forward thus in evidence against her, for cannot she in turn laugh at me? Did not I also assist in the arrangement and appointment of that house beautiful? We differed on the matter of the drawing-room carpet, I recollect. Ethelbertha fancied a dark blue velvet, but I felt sure, taking the wall-paper into consideration, that some shade of terra-cotta would harmonise best.

She agreed with me in the end, and we manufactured one out of an old chest protector. It had a really charming effect, and gave a delightfully warm tone to the room. The blue velvet we put in the kitchen. I deemed this extravagance, but Ethelbertha said that servants thought a lot of a good carpet, and that it paid to humour them in little things, when practicable.

The bedroom had one big bed and a cot in it; but I could not see where the girl was going to sleep. The architect had overlooked her altogether: that is so like an architect. The house also suffered from the inconvenience common to residences of its class, of possessing no stairs, so that to move from one room to another it was necessary to burst your way up through the ceiling, or else to come outside and climb in through a window; either of which methods must be fatiguing when you come to do it often.

Apart from these drawbacks, however, the house was one that any doll agent would have been justified in describing as a "most desirable family residence"; and it had been furnished with a lavishness that bordered on positive ostentation. In the bedroom there was a washing-stand, and on the washing-stand there stood a jug and basin, and in the jug there was real water. But all this was as nothing.

I have known mere ordinary, middle-class dolls' houses in which you might find washing-stands and jugs and basins and real water--ay, and even soap. But in this abode of luxury there was a real towel;so that a body could not only wash himself, but wipe himself afterwards, and that is a sensation that, as all dolls know, can be enjoyed only in the very first-class establishments.

Then, in the drawing-room, there was a clock, which would tick just so long as you continued to shake it (it never seemed to get tired);also a picture and a piano, and a book upon the table, and a vase of flowers that would upset the moment you touched it, just like a real vase of flowers. Oh, there was style about this room, I can tell you.

But the glory of the house was its kitchen. There were all things that heart could desire in this kitchen, saucepans with lids that took on and off, a flat-iron and a rolling-pin. A dinner service for three occupied about half the room, and what space was left was filled up by the stove--a REAL stove! Think of it, oh ye owners of dolls' houses, a stove in which you could burn real bits of coal, and on which you could boil real bits of potato for dinner--except when people said you mustn't, because it was dangerous, and took the grate away from you, and blew out the fire, a thing that hampers a cook.

I never saw a house more complete in all its details. Nothing had been overlooked, not even the family. It lay on its back, just outside the front door, proud but calm, waiting to be put into possession. It was not an extensive family. It consisted of four--papa, and mamma, and baby, and the hired girl; just the family for a beginner.