he has another.

Truly, Shirley's colonial reception was very enjoyable, we thought, as
we took a last glance at the serene, old-time faces and caught a last
whiff of ambergris from the queer, old-time wigs.

CHAPTER XXV

AN INCONGRUOUS BIT OF HOUSEBOATING

By this time, we were becoming anxious about the lateness of the
season. Of course it was only through some mistake that we were getting
all those fine warm days in December. Perhaps Nature had not had her
weather eye open when Father Time wet his thumb and turned over to the
last page of the calendar. But now, there was something in the look of
the sky and in the feel of the air to make us fearful that the mix-up
of the seasons had been discovered, and that winter was being prodded
to the front.

Still we lingered in Eppes Creek, and soon we could not do otherwise
than linger; for we wakened one morning to find the stream frozen over,
and Gadabout presenting the incongruous spectacle of a houseboat fast
in the ice.

All that day and the next the coldness held; and the ice and the tide
battled along the creek with crackings and roarings and, now and then,
reports like pistol shots. This surely was strange houseboating. It was
a serious matter too. We knew that we might be held in the grip of the
ice indefinitely. We did not care to spend the winter in Eppes Creek;
nor could we abandon our boat there.

Throwing on our heavy wraps and trying to throw off our heavy spirits,
we went above and paced the deck. In mockery our flags rippled under
the northwest wind; from our flower-boxes, leafless, shrivelled little
arms were held up to us; while our bright striped awning, with all its
associations of sunshine and summer-time, was close furled and frozen
stiff and hung with icicles.

We were surprised enough when the weather suddenly changed again, and
the bright, warm sun set up such a thawing as soon sent the ice out of
the creek and our anxieties with it. But no time was to be lost in
getting away from that beautiful, treacherous stream. We should make
one more visit to Shirley and then head again up river. But that last
visit should be a quite conventional one; we should run the houseboat
around to the regular steamboat pier in front of the old manor-house.

It was a warm, hazy afternoon down in Eppes Creek when we untied our
ropes from the trees (cast them off, we ought to say), and Gadabout
pulled her nose from the reedy bank and slowly backed out in