At last she sat up with a whispered exclamation.
"Good! I'll try that plan. Perhaps it won't do after all. But it cannot hurt to try. And if my scheme can make Rod the least bit more comfortable, then the trying will be well worth while!"
Very early the next morning, Marian set to work upon her brilliant plan for Roderick's comfort. The coast was clear for action. Both Roderick and Ned Burford had gone up the canal to oversee the excavation at the north laterals. Sally Lou had packed Mammy and the babies into the buckboard and had driven away to the nearest farm-house for eggs and butter. So Marian had a clear field. And she made eager use of every moment.
Perhaps two hundred yards from the canal bank, set well up on a little knoll where it could catch every passing breeze, stood a broad wooden platform. High posts, built to hold lanterns, were set at the four corners and half-way down each side.
"The young folks of the district built that platform for their picnic dances," Burford had told Marian. "But this year our dredges have torn up this whole section and have made the creek banks so miry and disagreeable that no picnic parties will come this way till the contract is finished and the turf has had time to grow again."
Marian measured the platform with a calculating eye.
"It is built of matched boards, as tight and sound as if they had put it up yesterday. It will make a splendid floor for Rod's house. But when it comes to building the house itself--that's the question."
The contract supplies, she knew, were kept in a store-room built astern of Roderick's house-boat. For a hot, tiresome hour she poked and pried through high-piled hogsheads and tiers of boxes, hoping that she might find a tent. But there was no such good fortune for her. She dragged out bale after bale of heavy new canvas. But every one of the scores of tents provided by the company was already pitched, to form the summer village occupied by the levee laborers. At last, quite vexed and impatient, she gave up her search.
"Although, if I had any knack at all, I could sew up a tent from these yards on yards of canvas," she reflected.
She carried one bolt of cloth on deck and unrolled it.
"This is splendid heavy canvas. It is just the solid, water-proof sort that the fishermen at the lake last summer used for walls and roof of their 'open-faced camp,' as they called it. Now, I wonder. Why can't I lash long strips of canvas to the four posts of the platform for walls; then fasten heavy wires from one post to another and lash a slanting canvas roof to that! I can canopy it with mosquito-bar--a double layer--for there are dozens of yards of netting here. It would be a ridiculously funny little coop, I know that. But it would be far cooler and quieter than the boat. I believe Rod would like it. Anyway, we'll see!"