extent it
must be renewed.

These are the tests that indicate whether the old house is worth buying
and what will be the essential expense to make it habitable. Sometimes
one or another defect is so severe as to make the venture foolish; again
it can be remedied by resort to strenuous methods. Not infrequently the
drawbacks of a bad cellar and a poor location are at once overcome by
removing the house altogether to a new site. This is practicable when
the building is sound in structure and an inexpensive operation if it is
small.

[Illustration: AN OLD CAPE COD HOUSE]

That was the proceeding which Miss Mabel L. Kittredge undertook with an
old fisherman's cottage that had stood for many years on the shores of
Cape Cod. It was a simple little building, dilapidated and
weather-beaten, and quite unsuggestive of a summer home. But its very
quaintness and diminutive size attracted her attention, and she
determined to investigate it. The owner was willing to part with it,
just as it stood, for eighty-five dollars, not including the land.

The location was not desirable, and it was decided to "fleck" the house,
as is the colloquial term on the Cape for preparing a building to be
moved. It was taken apart and floated across the water to its new
foundations in South Yarmouth. Here it was "unflecked" and set up facing
the harbor and the cool breezes from the ocean.

[Illustration: AN OLD CAPE COD HOUSE--SIDE VIEW]

The original building, erected in the early part of the nineteenth
century, was a small, shingled structure, thirty by twenty feet, with a
straight gable roof rising from the low stud of the first story. Its
proportions were not at all unpleasing, and the placing of the several
small-paned windows was particularly agreeable. There was a kitchen shed
attached to the rear.

When it was set in position in the new location, additional windows were
cut, a small porch built at the front entrance, and a second shed
attached at right angles to the kitchen wing. In the second story, a
broad flat-roofed dormer with three windows increased the interior
space, without seriously altering the straight lines of the roof. The
effort to retain the original simplicity of line is also evident in the
porch roof, which follows closely the wide angle of the gable ends of
the house.

[Illustration: The Living Room]

The original interior was cut up into a number of small rooms, the
partitions of which were removed, with the excep