"There is our houseboat!" cried Madge, waving her hand toward the half
dozen disreputable looking canal boats huddled close together.

"Where?" asked Jack in amazement.

"Oh, I don't know just exactly where," returned Madge with twinkling
eyes. "Everyone look here, please." She took two large squares of
white paper out of her bag. "You see, it is this way, Jack: We found
that to rent a houseboat takes such a lot of money that we decided
yesterday, to try to turn one of these old canal boats into a
houseboat, and I have drawn the plans of what I think ought to be done."

Madge, who had a decided talent for drawing, had sat up late into the
night to make her two sketches. One pictured the shanty boat as it
was, dingy and dirty, with a broken-down cabin of two rooms at the
stern. In the second drawing Madge's fairy wand, which was her gift of
imagination, had quite transformed the ugly boat. The deck of the
canal boat was about forty feet long, with a twelve-foot beam. To the
two rooms, which the ordinary shanty boat contains, she had added
another two, forming an oblong cabin, with four windows on each side
and a flat roof. The flat roof formed the second deck of the
prospective houseboat. It had a small railing around it, and a pair of
steps that led up from the outside to the upper deck. Madge had
decorated her fairy ship with garlands of flowers that hung far over
the sides of the deck.

Jack Bolling looked at the drawing a long time without saying a word.

"Don't you think it can be done, Jack?" inquired Madge eagerly. "You