old-fashioned bureau and two iron beds in it, and a clothes-horse, in
one corner, covered with muslin. When you opened one flap of it, it was
a closet. This was Aunty Edith and Aunty May's room.

In the other room, with the stovepipe in the middle of it, was a big
couch, and that was to be my bed at night. There was a big closet at one
end, made out of the place where the steps went up to the attic, and
that was where my clothes were to hang. One side of the room had
bookshelves, and on the wall were some of Aunty Edith's paintings; and
there was a doorway at one end without any door.

I said to Aunty Edith, "How do we get to the river from this house? Do
we have to go out of the front door and run down? And where's the stove
that the pipe belongs to? Is it in a cellar?" Then both the aunties
laughed, and they went to this doorway without any door, and there was a
funny thing that looked like a clumsy ladder. Aunty Edith told me those
were our best stairs, and that once they were canal boat stairs.

Well, you climbed down them very carefully, for they tipped a little,
and you landed on a dark little landing with a door. You opened the door
and stepped down a step and there you were in the nicest old kitchen
you ever saw!

The top part of the house was wooden, but this under part was of stone
and cement, and the walls inside were cement, and the ceiling was just
wood with the big floor beams showing through. And there was a door with
glass in the top, that you could look through down to the river and the
willows; and there was a window with a deep window seat you could sit in
and look at the river; then there was a long window at the side, where
the outside steps came down from the towpath, and that opened in two