Rudder Grange | Page 6

hours,
when over my pipe (I had given up cigars, as being too expensive and
inappropriate, and had taken to a tall pipe and canaster tobacco) we
talked and planned, and told each other our day's experience.
One of our earliest subjects of discussion was the name of our
homestead. Euphemia insisted that it should have a name. I was quite
willing, but we found it no easy matter to select an appropriate title. I
proposed a number of appellations intended to suggest the character of
our home. Among these were: "Safe Ashore," "Firmly Grounded," and
some other names of that style, but Euphemia did not fancy any of
them. She wanted a suitable name, of course, she said, but it must be
something that would SOUND like a house and BE like a boat.
"Partitionville," she objected to, and "Gangplank Terrace," did not suit
her because it suggested convicts going out to work, which naturally
was unpleasant.

At last, after days of talk and cogitation, we named our house "Rudder
Grange."
To be sure, it wasn't exactly a grange, but then it had such an enormous
rudder that the justice of that part of the title seemed to over-balance
any little inaccuracy in the other portion.
But we did not spend all our spare time in talking. An hour or two,
every evening was occupied in what we called "fixing the house," and
gradually the inside of our abode began to look like a conventional
dwelling. We put matting on the floors and cheap but very pretty paper
on the walls. We added now a couple of chairs, and now a table or
something for the kitchen. Frequently, especially of a Sunday, we had
company, and our guests were always charmed with Euphemia's
cunning little meals. The dear girl loved good eating so much that she
could scarcely fail to be a good cook.
We worked hard, and were very happy. And thus the weeks passed on.
CHAPTER II.
TREATING OF A NOVEL STYLE OF BOARDER.
In this delightful way of living, only one thing troubled us. We didn't
save any money. There were so many little things that we wanted, and
so many little things that were so cheap, that I spent pretty much all I
made, and that was far from the philosophical plan of living that I
wished to follow.
We talked this matter over a great deal after we had lived in our new
home for about a month, and we came at last to the conclusion that we
would take a boarder.
We had no trouble in getting a boarder, for we had a friend, a young
man who was engaged in the flour business, who was very anxious to
come and live with us. He had been to see us two or three times, and
had expressed himself charmed with our household arrangements.

So we made terms with him. The carpenter partitioned off another
room, and our boarder brought his trunk and a large red velvet arm-
chair, and took up his abode at "Rudder Grange."
We liked our boarder very much, but he had some peculiarities. I
suppose everybody has them. Among other things, he was very fond of
telling us what we ought to do. He suggested more improvements in the
first three days of his sojourn with us than I had thought of since we
commenced housekeeping. And what made the matter worse, his
suggestions were generally very good ones. Had it been otherwise I
might have borne his remarks more complacently, but to be continually
told what you ought to do, and to know that you ought to do it, is
extremely annoying.
He was very anxious that I should take off the rudder, which was
certainly useless to a boat situated as ours was, and make an
ironing-table of it. I persisted that the laws of symmetrical propriety
required that the rudder should remain where it was--that the very name
of our home would be interfered with by its removal, but he insisted
that "Ironing-table Grange" would be just as good a name, and that
symmetrical propriety in such a case did not amount to a row of pins.
The result was, that we did have the ironing-table, and that Euphemia
was very much pleased with it. A great many other improvements were
projected and carried out by him, and I was very much worried. He
made a flower-garden for Euphemia on the extreme forward-deck, and
having borrowed a wheelbarrow, he wheeled dozens of loads of arable
dirt up our gang-plank and dumped them out on the deck. When he had
covered the garden with a suitable depth of earth, he smoothed it off
and then planted flower-seeds. It was rather late in the season, but most
of them came