Houseboat Girl by Lois Lenski

you folks goin’, anyhow?” she asked, filled with curiosity.
    “Down the river just any place we feel like,” said Patsy. “We don’t have to stay in one place the way you do. Our house floats. It doesn’t set on posts in the ground like the houses round here.”
    “It looks almost like a house,” said Joella.
    Patsy frowned. “I wish it was a house,” she said.
    “You don’t like livin’ in a houseboat?” asked Joella.
    “Oh sure,” said Patsy. “Course I like it. I got to.”
    “But you’d rather live in a real house,” said Joella.
    “No, sir!” cried Patsy, fiercely. “Most people are not half as lucky as we are. They can’t take their houses with them when they go places. We’re regular snails! We take our house right along wherever we go.” She looked at the strange girl and began to brag a little. “You got to stay in one place all the time. I feel sorry for you. You can’t keep goin’ the way we do. Why, we can even go all the ways to New Orleans if we want to.”
    “Where’s that?” asked Joella.
    “Why, don’t you know?” asked Patsy. “Don’t you study geography? I can find it on our river maps. It’s in Louisiana, just above where the Mississippi flows into the Gulf of Mexico.”
    “Oh,” said Joella. “You goin’ there?”
    “No,” said Patsy. “We’re stayin’ here…I think.”
    “I’m glad,” said Joella softly.
    After Mrs. Foster put the houseboat in order, she decided to hunt up her old friend, Edie Barker, the lamplighter’s wife. Milly went along as far as the store, found some girls her own age there and went off with them to one of their houses. Mrs. Foster asked the man at the store where to find the Barkers. He pointed up the dirt road toward Ashport Ferry Landing.
    “They got a houseboat settin’ right next to a cotton field,” the man said. “You can’t miss it.”
    Mrs. Foster and Patsy started up the road, with Dan and Bunny coming behind. A car caught up with them, passing in a whirl of dust to go to the ferry. The cotton beside the road was in bloom now. Patsy picked a blossom and put it in her hair. Passing several tumbledown farm buildings, they soon saw a houseboat on the left ahead. It was perched high on the bank, resting on heavy posts. Patsy did not need to be told why the houses in Illinois and Kentucky and Arkansas along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers always stood on posts. That was because of high water every year.

    There stood Mrs. Barker on the little back porch with a broom in her hand.
    “Well, if it’s not Liz Foster!” she cried. “Seth told me he seen you folks comin’ down river and said you’d hunt us up.”
    The next minute they were all inside, and the two women were in each other’s arms, and the children were trying to remember Aunt Edie. The Barkers’ houseboat was much smaller than the Fosters’. It had three rooms, kitchen, bedroom and living room. It was tiny and cozy, and held a lot of furniture, including a TV set and a sewing machine. Aunt Edie was a plump good-natured woman of fifty, with hair already turning gray.
    “We’re always stoppin’ along the river, huntin’ folks up,” said Mrs. Foster. “Usually we find ’em, but sometimes it’s a hard job. We were afraid you folks had gone off again by this time.”
    “Law me!” exclaimed Mrs. Barker. “We been all over the map the last few years. We used to be at Ashport and got sick of it, so we went to Fort Pillow. Then we came back and lived in a tent at the head of this chute—you found us there, remember? Then we went to Louisiana for about a year. That state’s plumb full of houseboats, but it’s so wet, it gives you rheumatism.”
    “Seth is like Abe,” said Mrs. Foster. “He’s as crazy as Abe is—been all over and come back again like us.”
    “Seems like Seth is never satisfied,” said Mrs. Barker. “In the woods it was too lonesome. Seth likes to talk and there was no one but me. Then he tried Louisiana ’cause he was