Dorothy on a House Boat

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

A BIG GIFT FOR A SMALL MAID.

“Well, of all things!” exclaimed Mrs. Betty Calvert, shaking her white head and tossing her hands in a gesture of amazement. Then, as the letter she had held fell to the floor, her dark eyes twinkled with amusement and she smilingly demanded: “Dorothy, do you want an elephant?”

The girl had been reading her own letters, just come in the morning’s mail, but she paused to stare at her great-aunt and to ask in turn:

“Aunt Betty, what do you mean?”

“Because if you do here’s the chance of your life to get one!” answered the old lady, motioning toward the fallen letter.

Dolly understood that she was to pick it up and read it, and, having done so, remarked:

“Auntie dear, this doesn’t say anything about an elephant, as I can see.”

“Amounts to the same thing. The idea of a house-boat as a gift to a girl like you! My cousin Seth Winters must be getting into his dotage! Of course, girlie, I don’t mean that fully, but isn’t it a queer notion? What in the world can you, could you, do with a house-boat?”

“Live in it, sail in it, have the jolliest time in it! Why not, Auntie, darling?”

Dorothy’s face was shining with eagerness and she ran to clasp Mrs. Calvert with coaxing arms. “Why not, indeed, Aunt Betty? You’ve been shut up in this hot city all summer long; you haven’t had a bit of an outing, anywhere; it would do you lots of good to go sailing about on the river or bay; and—and—do say ‘yes,’ please, to dear Mr. Seth’s offer! Oh! do!”

The old lady kissed the uplifted face, merrily exclaiming:

“Don’t pretend it’s for my benefit, little wheedler! The idea of such a thing is preposterous—simply preposterous! Run away and write the silly man that we’ve no use for house-boats, but if he does happen to have an elephant on hand, a white elephant, we might consider accepting it as a gift! We could have it kept at the park Zoo, maybe, and some city youngsters might like that.”

Dorothy’s face clouded. She had become accustomed to receiving rich gifts, during her Summer on a Ranch, as the guest of the wealthy Fords, and now to have a house-boat offered her was only one more of the wonderful things life brought to her.

Going back to her seat beside the open window she pushed her own letters aside, for the moment, to re-read that of her old teacher and guardian, during her life on the mountain by the Hudson. She had always believed Mr. Winters to be the wisest of men, justly entitled to his nickname of the “Learned Blacksmith.” He wasn’t one to do anything without a good reason and, of course, Aunt Betty’s remarks about him had been only in jest. That both of them understood; and Dorothy now searched for the reason of this surprising gift. This was the letter:

“Dear Cousin Betty:

“Mr. Blank has failed in business, just as you warned me he would, and all I can recover of the money I loaned him is what is tied up in a house-boat, one of his many extravagances—though, in this case, not a great one.

“Of course, I have no use for such a floating structure on top of a mountain and I want to give it to our little Dorothy. As she has now become a shareholder in a mine with a small income of her own, she can afford to accept the boat and I know she will enjoy it. I have forwarded the deed of gift to my lawyers in your town and trust your own tangled business affairs are coming out right in the end. All well at Deerhurst. Jim Barlow came down to say that Dr. Sterling is going abroad for a few months and that the manse will be closed. I wish the boy were ready for college, but he isn’t. Also, that he wasn’t too proud to accept any help from Mr. Ford—but he is. He says the discovery of that mine on that gentleman’s property was an ‘accident’ on his own part, and he ‘won’t yet awhile.’ He wants ‘to earn his own way through the world’ and, from present appearances, I think he’ll have a chance to try. He’s on the lookout now for another job.”

There followed a few more sentences about affairs in the highland village where the writer lived, but not a doubt was expressed as to the fitness of his extraordinary gift to a little girl, nor of its acceptance by her....