CHAPTER VI
THE NEW RUDDER GRANGE
I have before given an account of the difficulties we encountered when we started out house-hunting, and it was this doleful experience which made Euphemia declare that before we set out on a second search for a residence, we should know exactly what we wanted.
To do this, we must know how other people live, we must examine into the advantages and disadvantages of the various methods of house-keeping, and make up our minds on the subject.
When we came to this conclusion we were in a city boarding-house, and were entirely satisfied that this style of living did not suit us at all.
At this juncture I received a letter from the gentleman who had boarded with us on the canal-boat. Shortly after leaving us the previous fall, he had married a widow lady with two children, and was now keeping house in a French flat in the upper part of the city. We had called upon the happy couple soon after their marriage, and the letter, now received, contained an invitation for us to come and dine, and spend the night.
"We'll go," said Euphemia. "There's nothing I want so much as to see how people keep house in a French fiat. Perhaps we'll like it. And I must see those children." So we went.
The house, as Euphemia remarked, was anything but flat. It was very tall indeed—the tallest house
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