end for end, then drifted slowly away from its neighbours, out into the
darkness and the river. Its occupants seemed unconscious of danger.
There was one of them standing on the porch quite unconcernedly turning
a wheel, while two or three others were watching, with rather amused
expressions, two little engines chugging away near the kitchen stove.

And thus it was that the houseboat Gadabout left her moorings in the
outskirts of old Norfolk, and went spluttering down the Elizabeth to
find Hampton Roads and to start upon her cruise up the historic James
River.

But to tell the story we must begin before that summer morning. It was
this way. We were three: the daughter-wife (who happened to see the
magazine article that led to it all), her mother, and her husband. The
head of the family, true to the spirit of the age, had achieved a
nervous breakdown and was under instructions from his physician to
betake himself upon a long, a very long, vacation.

It was while we were in perplexed consideration as to where to go and
what to do, that the magazine article appeared--devoted to
houseboating. It was a most fetching production with a picture that
appealed to every overwrought nerve. There was a charming bit of water
with trees hanging over; a sky all soft and blue (you knew it was soft
and blue just as you knew that the air was soft and cool; just as you
knew that a drowsy peace and quiet was brooding over all); and there,
in the midst, idly floated a houseboat with a woman idly swinging in a
hammock and a man idly fishing from the back porch.

That article opened a new field for our consideration. Landlubbers of
the landlubbers though we were, its water-gypsy charm yet sank deep. We