pipe through the house just above his head. In the pot upon it, the
potatoes were boiling, boiling away, and the little chips of bacon
were curling up in the pan.

Outside, he could see all the little skirts and the little pairs of
pants, dancing gaily in the wind. He could hear the children who owned
those skirts and pairs of pants running all over the boat. The patter
of their feet sounded like raindrops on the deck above him.

They seemed to be forever getting into trouble, those thirteen
children, and the Round Fat Rosy Woman was forever running to the door
of the little house and shouting to one or the other.

"Take care, Maintop!" she would call to one boy as she pulled him back
from falling into the Canal.

"Ho there, Bowsprit!" she would yell to another, as she fished him out
of the coal.

They were certainly a great care, those children, and all at once
Marmaduke decided he knew who their mother must be. The boat was
shaped just like a huge shoe and she surely had so many children she
didn't know what to do. Yes, she must be the Old Woman Who Lived in a
Shoe, only the shoe must have grown into a canalboat.

He wondered about the funny names she called them.

"Are those their real names?" he asked, as he lay on his little shelf.

"Yes," she said, "my husband out there with the pipe was a sailor