Rudder Grange Part 9

"Isn't this cute?" said Euphemia, reading over the cards. "Here's his name and this is his bell and tube! Which would you do first, ring or blow?"

"My dear," said I, "you don't blow up those tubes. We must ring the bell, just as if it were an ordinary front-door bell, and instead of coming to the door, some one will call down the tube to us."

I rang the bell under the boarder's name, and very soon a voice at the tube said:

"Well?"

Then I told our names, and in an instant the front door opened.

"Why, their flat must be right here," whispered Euphemia. "How quickly the girl came!"

And she looked for the girl as we entered. But there was no one there.

"Their flat is on the fifth story," said I. "He mentioned that in his letter. We had better shut the door and go up."

Up and up the softly carpeted stairs we climbed, and not a soul we saw or heard.

"It is like an enchanted cavern," said Euphemia. "You say the magic word, the door in the rock opens and you go on, and on, through the vaulted pa.s.sages--"

"Until you come to the ogre," said the boarder, who was standing at the top of the stairs. He did not behave at all like an ogre, for he was very glad to see us, and so was his wife. After we had settled down in the parlor and the boarder's wife had gone to see about something concerning the dinner, Euphemia asked after the children.

"I hope they haven't gone to bed," she said, "for I do so want to see the dear little things."

The ex-boarder, as Euphemia called him, smiled grimly.

"They're not so very little," he said. "My wife's son is nearly grown.

He is at an academy in Connecticut, and he expects to go into a civil engineer's office in the spring. His sister is older than he is. My wife married--in the first instance--when she was very young--very young in deed."

"Oh!" said Euphemia; and then, after a pause, "And neither of them is at home now?"

"No," said the ex-boarder. "By the way, what do you think of this dado?

It is a portable one; I devised it myself. You can take it away with you to another house when you move. But there is the dinner-bell. I'll show you over the establishment after we have had something to eat."

After our meal we made a tour of inspection. The flat, which included the whole floor, contained nine or ten rooms, of all shapes and sizes.

The corners in some of the rooms were cut off and shaped up into closets and recesses, so that Euphemia said the corners of every room were in some other room.

Near the back of the flat was a dumb-waiter, with bells and speaking-tubes. When the butcher, the baker, or the kerosene-lamp maker, came each morning, he rang the bell, and called up the tube to know what was wanted. The order was called down, and he brought the things in the afternoon.

All this greatly charmed Euphemia. It was so cute, so complete. There were no interviews with disagreeable trades-people, none of the ordinary annoyances of housekeeping. Everything seemed to be done with a bell, a speaking-tube or a crank.

"Indeed," said the ex-boarder, "if it were not for people tripping over the wires, I could rig up attachments by which I could sit in the parlor, and by using pedals and a key-board, I could do all the work of this house without getting out of my easy-chair."

One of the most peculiar features of the establishment was the servant's room. This was at the rear end of the floor, and as there was not much s.p.a.ce left after the other rooms had been made, it was very small; so small, indeed, that it would accommodate only a very short bedstead.

This made it necessary for our friends to consider the size of the servant when they engaged her.

"There were several excellent girls at the intelligence office where I called," said the ex-boarder, "but I measured them, and they were all too tall. So we had to take a short one, who is only so so. There was one big Scotch girl who was the very person for us, and I would have taken her if my wife had not objected to my plan for her accommodation.

"What was that?" I asked.

"Well," said he, "I first thought of cutting a hole in the part.i.tion wall at the foot of the bed, for her to put her feet through."

"Never!" said his wife, emphatically. "I would never have allowed that."

"And then," continued he, "I thought of turning the bed around, and cutting a larger hole, through which she might have put her head into the little room on this side. A low table could have stood under the hole, and her head might have rested on a cushion on the table very comfortably."

"My dear," said his wife, "it would have frightened me to death to go into that room and see that head on a cushion on a table--"

"Like John the Baptist," interrupted Euphemia.

"Well," said our ex-boarder, "the plan would have had its advantages."

"Oh!" cried Euphemia, looking out of a back window. "What a lovely little iron balcony! Do you sit out there on warm evenings?"

"That's a fire-escape," said the ex-boarder. "We don't go out there unless it is very hot indeed, on account of the house being on fire.

You see there is a little door in the floor of the balcony and an iron ladder leading to the balcony beneath, and so on, down to the first story."

"And you have to creep through that hole and go down that dreadful steep ladder every time there is a fire?" said Euphemia.

"Well, I guess we would never go down but once," he answered.

"No, indeed," said Euphemia; "you'd fall down and break your neck the first time," and she turned away from the window with a very grave expression on her face.

Soon after this our hostess conducted Euphemia to the guest-chamber, while her husband and I finished a bed-time cigar.

When I joined Euphemia in her room, she met me with a mysterious expression on her face. She shut the door, and then said in a very earnest tone:

"Do you see that little bedstead in the corner? I did not notice it until I came in just now, and then, being quite astonished, I said, 'Why here's a child's bed; who sleeps here?' 'Oh,' says she, 'that's our little Adele's bedstead. We have it in our room when she's here.'

'Little Adele!' said I, 'I didn't know she was little--not small enough for that bed, at any rate.' 'Why, yes,' said she, 'Adele is only four years old. The bedstead is quite large enough for her.' 'And she is not here now?' I said, utterly amazed at all this. 'No,' she answered, 'she is not here now, but we try to have her with us as much as we can, and always keep her little bed ready for her.' 'I suppose she's with her father's people,' I said, and she answered, 'Oh yes,' and bade me good-night. What does all this mean? Our boarder told us that the daughter is grown up, and here his wife declares that she is only four years old! I don't know what in the world to make of this mystery!"

I could give Euphemia no clue. I supposed there was some mistake, and that was all I could say, except that I was sleepy, and that we could find out all about it in the morning. But Euphemia could not dismiss the subject from her mind. She said no more,--but I could see--until I fell asleep--that she was thinking about it.

It must have been about the middle of the night, perhaps later, when I was suddenly awakened by Euphemia starting up in the bed, with the exclamation:

"I have it!"

"What?" I cried, sitting up in a great hurry. "What is it? What have you got? What's the matter?"

"I know it!" she said, "I know it. Our boarder is a GRANDFATHER! Little Adele is the grown-up daughter's child. He was quite particular to say that his wife married VERY young. Just to think of it! So short a time ago, he was living with us--a bachelor--and now, in four short months, he is a grandfather!"

Carefully propounded inquiries, in the morning, proved Euphemia's conclusions to be correct.

The next evening, when we were quietly sitting in our own room, Euphemia remarked that she did not wish to have anything to do with French flats.

"They seem to be very convenient," I said.

"Oh yes, convenient enough, but I don't like them. I would hate to live where everything let down like a table-lid, or else turned with a crank.

And when I think of those fire-escapes, and the boarder's grandchild, it makes me feel very unpleasantly."