The Mortons were sitting on their porch on a warm evening waving fans and trying to think that the coming night promised comfortable sleep. The Ethels sat on the upper step, Roger was stretched on the floor at one side, Helen sat beside her mother’s hammock which she kept in gentle motion by an occasional movement of her hand, and Dicky was dozing in a large chair. In a near-by tree an insect insisted that “Katy did,” and in the grass a cricket chirruped its shrill call.
“I do feel that Aunt Louise’s being able to build this pretty house after all her years of wandering is about the nicest thing that ever happened out of a fairy story,” murmured Helen softly to her mother, but loudly enough for the others to hear.
“There are people who talk about the law of compensation,” smiled Mrs. Morton in the darkness. “They think that if one good is lacking in our lives other goods take its place.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I believe that everything that happens to us comes because we have obeyed or disobeyed God’s laws. Sometimes we are quite unconscious of disobeying them, but the law has to work out just as if we knew all about it.”
“For instance?” came a deep voice from the floor, indicating that Roger had awakened.
“Do you remember the time you walked off the end of the porch one day?”
“I should say I did! My nose aches at the mere thought of it.”
“You didn’t know anything about the law of gravitation, but the law worked in your case just as if you had known all about it.”
“I’m bound to state that it did,” confirmed Roger, still gently rubbing his nose as he lay in the shadow.
“It seems as if it might have held up for a little boy who didn’t know what he was going to get by disobeying it,” said Ethel Blue sympathetically.
“But it didn’t and it never does,” returned Mrs. Morton. “That’s one reason why we ought to try to learn what God’s laws are just as fast and as thoroughly as we can; not only the laws of nature like the law of gravitation, but laws of morality and justice and right thinking and unselfishness and kindness toward others.”
“Sometimes mighty mean people seem to prosper,” said Ethel Brown, with a hint of rebellion in her voice.
“That’s because those people obey to the letter the law that controls prosperity of a material kind. A man may be cruel to his wife and unkind to his children, but he may have a genius for making money. Some people call it the law of compensation. I call it merely an understanding of the financial law and a lack of understanding of the law of kindness.”
“I don’t see what law dear Aunt Louise could have broken to have made her have such a hard time,” wondered Ethel Blue. “Her husband being killed and her having to wander about without a home for so many years—that seems like a hard punishment.”
“Men have decided that ‘ignorance of the law is no excuse’!” said her aunt, “and the same thing is true of laws that are not man-made.”
“That seems awfully hard,” objected Helen; “it doesn’t seem fair to punish a person for what he doesn’t know.”
“If a cannibal should come to Rosemont and should kill some one and have a barbecue, we should think that he ought to be deprived of his liberty because he was a dangerous person to have about, even if we felt sure that he did not know that he was doing an act forbidden by New Jersey law. The position is that although a person may be ignorant of the law it is his business to know it. That seems to be the way with the higher laws; we may break them in our ignorance—but we ought not to be ignorant. We ought to try just as hard as we know how all the time to do everything as well as we can and to be as good as we can. If we never let ourselves do a mean act or think a mean thought we’re bound to come to an understanding of the great laws sooner than if we just jog along not thinking anything about them. I believe one reason why your Aunt Louise was so slow in reaching the end of her troubles after Uncle Leonard died was because she was unable to control her sorrow. She has told me that she was completely crushed by his death and the condition of poverty in which she found herself with a little child—Dorothy—to take care of.”
“I don’t blame her,” murmured Ethel Blue.
“She blames herself, because she has learned that giving way to grief paralyzes all the powers that God has given us to carry on the work of life with. If our minds are filled with gloom our bodies don’t behave as they ought to—I dare say even you children know that.”
“I know,” agreed Ethel Blue, who was sensitive and imaginative and suffered unnecessarily over many things.
“Your mind doesn’t go, either,” Roger added. “I know when I got in the dumps last spring about graduating I couldn’t do a thing. My work went worse than ever. It was only when Mr. Wheeler”—referring to the principal of the high school—“jollied me up and told me I was getting on as well as the rest of the fellows that I took a brace; and you know I did come out all right.”
“I should say you did, dear,” acknowledged his mother proudly. “Instances like that make you understand how necessary it is to be brave and to be filled with joy because life is going on as well as it is. It is our duty to make the most of everything that is given us—our bodies, our minds, our spirits—and if courage will help or joy will help then we must cultivate courage and joy.”
“Did Aunt Louise see that after a while?”
“Not for a long time, she says. After the shock of Uncle Leonard’s sudden death had worn away somewhat she began naturally to have a little more courage—not to be so completely crushed as she was at first. Then she saw that when she was feeling brave she could accomplish more, and succeed better in new undertakings. If she went to ask for work somewhere and had no hope that she would receive it she usually did not receive it; but if she went feeling that this day was to be one of success for her it usually was.”
“I suppose she went in with a sort ‘Of course you’ll give it to me’ air that made the men she was asking think of ‘of course’ they would,” smiled Roger.
“I don’t doubt it. Then she says that she found out that there was real value in laughter.”
“In laughter!” repeated Ethel Brown. “Why laughter is just foolishness.”
“No, indeed; laughter is the outward expression of delight.”
“Lord Chesterfield told his son he hoped he’d never hear him laugh in all his life,” offered Roger.
“Lord Chesterfield hated noisy laughter as much as I do. There’s nothing more annoying than empty, silly giggling and laughter; but the laughter that means real delight over something worth being delighted at—that’s quite another matter. Lord Chesterfield and I are agreed in being opposed to a vulgar manner of laughing, but we are also agreed in believing that delight needs expression. Isn’t it in that same letter that he says he hopes he will often see his son smile?”
“Same place,” responded Roger briefly.
“Aunt Louise says she found that even if she wasn’t feeling really gay she could raise her spirits by doing her best to laugh at something. If you hunt hard enough there is almost always something funny enough to laugh at within reach of you.”
“Like Dicky here snoozing away as soundly as if he were in bed.”
“Poor little man. You needn’t carry him up yet, though. He’s not uncomfortable there.”
“There’s one thing I think is perfectly wonderful about Aunt Louise,” said Ethel Blue; “she takes so much pleasure out of little things. She’s interested in everything the U. S. C. does, and she wants to help on anything the town undertakes—you know how nice she was about the school gardens—and sometimes when a day comes that seems just stupid with nothing to do at all, if you go over to Aunt Louise’s she’ll tell you something she’s seen or heard that day that you never would have noticed for yourself and that really is interesting.”
“She gets their full value out of everything that passes before her eyes. It’s the wisest thing to do. The big things of life are more absorbing but very few of us encounter the big things of life. Most of us meet the small matters, the everyday happenings, and nothing else.”
“Isn’t life full of a mess of ’em!” ejaculated Roger. “Getting up and dressing and brushing your hair and eating three meals a day have to be done three hundred sixty-five times a year; whereas you hear some splendid music or come across a fine new poem or find yourself in a position where you can do a real kindness about once in a cat’s age. Queer, isn’t it?”
“That’s just why it’s a good plan to see the opportunities in the little things. If we see with clear eyes we may be able to do some small kindnesses oftener than ‘once in a cat’s age.’ It’s certainly true that the everyday troubles, the trifling annoyances, are really harder to bear than the big troubles.”
“O-o-o!” disclaimed Helen.
“The big troubles give you a bigger shock, but then you pull yourself together and summon your strength, and strength to endure them comes. But the small matters—they come so often and they seem such pin pricks that it seems not worth while to call upon your powers of endurance.”
“Yet if you don’t you’re as cross as two sticks all the time,” finished Helen. “I know how it is. It’s like having a serious wound or a mosquito bite.”
They all laughed, for Roger, as if to illustrate her remarks, gave a slap at a buzzing enemy at just the appropriate moment.
“Another thing that helps to make Aunt Louise a happy woman now is that she is at peace not only with everybody on earth but also with herself. If she makes a mistake she doesn’t fret about it; she does her best to remedy it, and she does her best not to repeat it. ‘Once may be excusable ignorance,’ she says, ‘but twice is stupidity,’ and then she tells the tale of the boy who was walking across a field and fell into a dry well which he knew nothing about. He roared loudly and after a time a farmer heard him and pulled him out. The next day he was walking across the same field and he fell again into the same well.”
“He set up the same roar, I suppose.”
“A perfect imitation of the previous one. The same farmer came. When he looked down the well and saw the same boy he said disgustedly, ‘Yesterday I thought ye were a poor, unknowin’ lad; to-day I know ye’re a sad fool.’”
Again they all laughed.
“She’s always cheerful and always affectionate and she’s as dear as she can be and I’m glad she’s going to have this lovely house and I wish we had one just like it,” cried Helen in a burst.
“We have a good house.”
“But it doesn’t belong to us.”
“We Army and Navy people can’t expect to own houses, my child. You don’t need to have that told you at this late day.”
“I know that. If Father weren’t so keen on having us all together while we’re being educated we wouldn’t have been in Rosemont as long as we have; but I sometimes envy the people who have a home of their own that they are sure to stay in for ever so many years.”
“When you feel that way you must think of the many advantages of the Army and Navy children. If your father had not been on the Pacific station when you were the Ethels’ age you wouldn’t have had a chance to see California when you were old enough to enjoy it and remember it.”
“I know, Mother. I didn’t mean to growl. I just thought that Father had as much money as Aunt Louise from his father, and he had his salary besides, and yet we haven’t a house of our own.”
“We’ve had a good many of Uncle Sam’s houses, which is more than your Aunt Louise has had. But you must remember that her inheritance from your Grandfather Morton was accumulating for many years while her family didn’t know where she was, while your father and Ethel Blue’s father have been spending the income of theirs all along.”
“Uncle Roger has had a lot of children to spend his on, but Father hasn’t had any one but me,” said Ethel Blue, whose life had been entirely spent with her cousins because her mother had died when she was a tiny baby. Never before had she thought whether her father, who was a captain in the Army, had any money or not. Now she saw that he must be better provided with it than his brother, her Uncle Roger, the father of Ethel Brown and Helen and Roger and Dicky, who was a Lieutenant in the Navy.
“Your father is always generous with his money, but I dare say he is saving it for some time when he will want it,” suggested Mrs. Morton.
“I don’t know when he’ll want it any more than he does now,” said Ethel Blue.
“Perhaps he’ll want to have a house of his own at whatever post he is when he has a grown-up daughter,” smiled Helen. “You’d better learn to keep house right off.”
The idea thrilled Ethel. Never before had she happened to think of the possibility of joining her father after her school days were over. Never having known any home except with Ethel Brown and her other cousins she had always seen the future as shared with them. The notion of leaving them was painful, but the chance of being always with her father, of being his housekeeper, of seeing him every day, of making him comfortable, was one that filled her with delight. Her blue eyes filled with tenderness as she dreamed over the possibility.
“I have lots to learn yet before I should know enough,” she murmured, staring almost unseeingly at her cousin, “but it’s wonderful to think I could do it.”
The new idea would not leave her mind, though, indeed, she made no effort to drive it out. That the future might hold for her a change so complete was something she wanted to let her thoughts linger on. She hardly noticed that Roger was gathering Dicky up into his arms to carry him upstairs to bed, or that there was a general stir on the veranda, betokening a move indoors.
“Miss Graham was at Dorothy’s this afternoon,” Ethel Brown said as she rose and picked up the straw cushion on which she had been sitting.
“Was she?” inquired Helen interestedly. “I wish I had seen her. I never have yet, you know.”
“Neither has Ethel Blue. She and Aunt Louise and Dorothy and I went over to the new house and looked at the attic. She says she’ll come over next week and help us about the bedroom floor. That will be ready then for us to talk about the decorating.”
“Be sure and let me know when she is coming. What did she say about the attic?”
“She liked it especially because it had been sheathed, following all the ins and outs. She thought the irregularity was pretty. She suggested a closet for furs over the kitchen. It won’t cost much to bring the refrigerating pipes up there, she says.”
“That’s bully. Aunt Louise may take care of my fur gloves for me next summer if the moths don’t eat them up this year,” promised Roger who had stopped in the doorway to hear Ethel Brown’s report, and stood with the still sleeping Dicky over his shoulder.
“She suggested a raised ledge about fourteen inches high to stand trunks on.”
“Then you don’t break your back bending over them when you’re hunting for something,” exclaimed Helen. “That’s splendid. She seems to have practical ideas as well as ornamental ones.”
“She thought there ought to be a fire bucket closet up there, too. You know Aunt Louise has had them put in on all the other floors, but she didn’t think of it there.”
“What is it?” asked Mrs. Morton.
“Just a narrow closet with four shelves. On each of the lower three are fire buckets to be kept full of water all the time and on the top shelf are some of those hand grenade things and chemical squirt guns. They don’t look very well when they’re right out in sight. This way covers them up but makes them just as convenient. There is to be no lock on the door of the closet and FIRE is to be painted outside so every one will know where it is even if he gets rattled when the fire really happens.”
“Are the maids’ rooms to be on the attic floor?” asked Mrs. Morton.
“Two little beauties, and a bath-room between them. One room is to be pink and the other blue and they’re going to have ivory paint and fluffy curtains just like Dorothy’s.”
“Did you think to say anything to Miss Graham about the Club’s using the attic in winter for weekly meetings?”
“Dorothy did. She thought a movable platform would be a great scheme; one wide enough for us to use for a little stage when we wanted to have singing or recitations up there. She picked out a good place for the phonograph, where the shape of the ceiling wouldn’t make the sound queer, and she thought rattan furniture stained brown would be pretty, and scrim curtains—not dead white ones, but a sort of goldeny cream that would harmonize with the wood. There are lovely big cotton rugs in dull blues, that aren’t expensive, she says; and if we don’t want to see the row of trunks and chests against the wall we can arrange screens that will shut them out of sight and will also take the place of the pictures that you can’t hang on a wall that slopes the wrong way.”
“I don’t see, then, but Aunt Louise will have an attic and we’ll have a club room and both parties to the transaction will be pleased,” beamed Helen, who, as president of the Club was always careful that the members should be comfortable when they gathered for their weekly talking and planning and working.
“Doesn’t Miss Graham come from Washington?” asked Ethel Blue dreamily, half awakening to the conversation.
“Yes, you know she does.”
“Fort Myer is just across the river; I wonder if she knows Father.”
“Ask her when you see her,” recommended Ethel Brown, and they all went in to bed as a clap of thunder gave promise of a cooling shower.
It proved to be quite a week later before the workmen were far enough along to make it worth while for Miss Graham to be summoned to a conference on the decoration of the bedroom floor, and when Ethel Blue met her at last she forgot altogether to ask if she knew her dearly beloved father.
There were several reasons why she did not ask. In the first place she had forgotten that she meant to; in the next, Miss Daisy was so absorbed in what she was hearing from all the Club members about their ideas for the bed-rooms, and so interested in comparing them with her own practical knowledge of how they could be carried out, that no one who listened to her or saw her at work wanted to interrupt her with any questions that had no bearing on the matter in hand.
Not that she was not interested in the young people. She was thoroughly interested in them. She knew all of their names and sorted out one from the other immediately just from Margaret’s and James’s descriptions of them. She listened attentively to their suggestions and they all felt that she was treating their ideas with respect and that if she did not always agree with them she had a good reason for it.
“I think she’s the most competent woman almost that I ever saw,” said Helen admiringly to Margaret as they stood at one side of the upper hall and watched her as she rapidly sketched for Mrs. Smith what she meant by a certain plan of window hanging.
Helen was greatly interested in new occupations for women and the fact that this woman had studied to be an interior decorator and had succeeded so well that she had orders from the suburbs of New York itself had impressed the young girl as making her well worth trying to know well. Helen was not drawn toward interior decorating—she had already made up her mind, that she was to be one of the scientific home-makers educated at the School of Mothercraft—but she admired women with the courage to start new things, and this work seemed to her to be perfectly suited to a woman and at the same time of enough importance to be really worth while putting a lot of preparation into it. The dressing of shop windows seemed to her another peculiarly feminine occupation, hardly entered at all, as yet, by women, and capable of being developed into an art.
“The decoration of a room or a building ought to seem a sort of growth from the room or the building,” Miss Graham was explaining to the Ethels. “It ought to seem perfectly natural that it should be there, just as a blossom seems perfectly natural to find on a plant. I never like the phrase ‘applied design,’” she continued, smiling as she turned to Mrs. Smith. “It sounds as if you made a design and then clapped it on to the afflicted spot as if it were a plaster of some kind.”
“Too often it looks that way,” Mrs. Smith smiled in return. “Come and see how we’ve arranged our sleeping porches.”
As Miss Graham stood in the doorway that opened on to the porch of Dorothy’s room, one hand resting on Ethel Brown’s shoulder, Helen felt more than ever the power—for friendliness and good will as well as for the execution of her art—that this dark-eyed, dark-haired, ruddy-cheeked young woman possessed. Her nose was a trifle too short for beauty and her mouth a bit too wide, but her coloring denoted health, her hair curled crisply over a broad forehead, her teeth were brilliantly white, and the straight folds of her gown showed the lines of her strong figure as the strange dull blue-green of her linen frock, dashed with a bit of orange, brought into relief all the good points of her tinting.
“She makes you want to stop and look at her,” Helen decided, “and you want to know her, too.”
Mrs. Smith had arranged for three sleeping porches, one for her own room, one for Dorothy’s, and a larger one outside of the nursery where the Belgian baby enjoyed herself in the daytime. This porch was also shared by Elisabeth’s care-taker. Each porch was on a different side of the house, so that they did not encroach upon each other, and each was somewhat different in arrangement.
“Did you originate this idea?” asked Miss Graham, as she examined the sliding windows by which the bed was to be shut off from the room at night and enclosed in the room in the morning. “You never need step out of bed on to the cold floor of the porch,” she commented approvingly.
“I saw that in a sanitarium,” returned Mrs. Smith. “It was desirable that the patients should never be chilled and the doctor and architect invented this way of preventing it.”
“It’s capital,” smiled Miss Graham, “and so simple. When the inside sash is closed, the outside is up, and vice versa. Are they all like this?”
“Yes,” answered her hostess. “Dorothy is to have a couch in that corner, and a table and chairs. There is to be a screw eye attached to the foot of the couch. A weight on the end of a cord will go through a pulley fastened to the wall, high up over the head of the couch. There will be a hook at the other end of the cord. When this hook goes into the screw eye and the weight is pulled, the couch will stand on its head and will be out of the way at any time when floor space is more to be desired than lying down comfort.”
“Of course there will be some sort of drapery to cover the under side when it is hauled up against the wall,” said Miss Graham with a question in her voice.
“Dorothy has something in mind that is going to meet that difficulty, she thinks,” answered Mrs. Smith.
“Are you going to have your room of any decided color,” asked Miss Graham.
“I’ve been perfectly crazy for a rose-colored room, ever since I was a tiny child,” answered Dorothy. “I’ve set my heart on this room’s looking like a pink rose—”
“Or a bunch of apple blossoms?” asked Miss Graham.
Ethel Blue looked quickly at the decorator when she made this suggestion which at once stirred the young girl’s imagination to a mental sight of a springtime tree laden with clusters of blossoms, whose delicate white was flushed with the delicate pink of the dawn. The suggestion appealed to her immediately as possible of a development far more exquisite than that which Dorothy had planned. Both would be pink, yet the fineness of the new color scheme seemed to her suited to Dorothy’s slender grace. She could not have put it into words but she felt that Miss Graham had a feeling for color that enabled her to adapt the room in which the color was to be used to the personality of the young girl who was chiefly to use it. Instinctively she moved closer to Miss Graham and met her smiling glance with a nod and smile of understanding.
Dorothy liked the new idea.
“I think an apple-blossom room would be perfectly lovely,” she exclaimed. “If Mother would only let me use wall-paper—I saw such a beauty pattern the other day. There were clusters of apple-blossoms all over it.”
“Are you going to use wall-paper,” Miss Graham asked Mrs. Smith.
“Dorothy and I decided that we would not use wall-paper in the bed-rooms at any rate,” answered Dorothy’s mother.
“I wish we hadn’t,” pouted Dorothy, but she was cheered when Miss Graham nodded her approval of their decision.
“You’re quite right,” she said. “Apart from the sanitary side it isn’t a good plan to paper walls until the plaster is thoroughly dry. This is especially true of a house built on the side of a hill.”
“This house has such a wonderful concrete foundation,” said Margaret, “that I should think it would be always perfectly solid.”
“So should I,” answered Miss Graham, “but there’s always a chance that some part of the soil beneath may give a little when the full weight of a house rests upon it. The settling of a house for only a half inch or an inch would play havoc with the plaster on these walls.”
“You think we’d better hold back the paper for a final resort?” asked Mrs. Smith.
“I never advise paper in bed-rooms unless there’s good reason to do so,” answered the decorator. “Here is what I should suggest for an apple-blossom room—though perhaps you have some ideas that you would like to have carried out?” she interrupted herself to ask Dorothy.
“No,” said Dorothy, “as long as it’s pink and pretty I don’t care how it is decorated.”
Miss Graham stood in the centre of the room now, noticing how the sunshine fell on the floor, the shadow at the end where the sleeping porch was, and the possible positions for the various articles of furniture.
“I seem to see these walls washed with a white which is tinted with a faint flush of pink,” said Miss Graham slowly, as she thought it out. “That means a pink so delicate that it will not irritate the weariest nerves and will soothe to sleep by its beauty. The wood-work should be similar in tone but a trifle more like ivory. Do you know that chintz that has blurry, indefinite flowers on it?”
Dorothy said that she did.
“I saw a lovely piece of it the other day with a design of apple-blossoms. I should use that as a covering for your bed, your couch, your chairs, and for hangings for the windows. Then across one end of the wall—on that shadiest side,—I should throw a branch of apple-blossoms, painted in the same blurry, indefinite way in which the flowers appear on the chintz. I knew a man who was enough of the artist in his soul to do the thing as if the wall had suddenly grown thin and through it you could see an apple tree in blossom out in the orchard.”
“I think that would be perfectly lovely,” said Dorothy, and all the others expressed the greatest pleasure at the proposed scheme of decoration.
“Here is what I would suggest for the windows,” said Miss Daisy, taking out her note book, and sketching with a few rapid lines the folds of apple-blossom chintz, falling straight at the sides, with a valance at the top showing a very slight fullness.
“Between these and the windows,” said Miss Graham, “I should put Swiss muslin, either perfectly plain or dotted or with a fine cross-bar, whichever you like best. I should have those muslin curtains next to the glass all alike all over the house and the shades, too, so that the effect from the outside will be uniform and not messy.”
“That neatness will suit Ethel Brown’s ideas of what is harmonious,” laughed Helen, and Miss Graham flashed her brilliant smile on Ethel Brown, who was nodding her approval of the idea as she listened.
“Now, how had you planned to finish the other sleeping porches?” inquired Miss Graham.
“We thought we’d better have a radiator on the one leading off the nursery,” said Mrs. Smith.
“You’ll have to be awfully careful about its freezing,” warned Miss Graham.
“I suppose we shall, but it seemed as if it might be advisable with a child who has been so delicate as Elisabeth. You will see that the outer ledge of her porch is somewhat higher than either Dorothy’s or mine and there are pieces of lattice work to fill in the openings on very cold nights. We thought we’d have out there a low play-table for the baby, and one or two little chairs and a work-table and easy-chair for Miss Merriam.”
A Play-table for the Baby
“There are cotton Chinese rugs that are extremely pretty for upstairs porches,” said Miss Graham. “One that is largely white but has a dash of green and pink, would be charming for Dorothy’s porch. What color is the baby’s room to be?”
“Ethel Blue wants us to have it pale blue.”
Again a vivid look of appreciation came into Miss Graham’s eyes as she turned them on Ethel Blue, but she merely said, “There are charming Chinese rugs in white with dull blue designs like old Chinese pottery. Tell me what you had planned in your mind for Elisabeth,” she continued, turning toward the young girl and extending her hand so winningly that Ethel found herself not only standing beside her with a feeling that she had been her friend for a long time, but filled with confidence that her suggestions would not be laughed at, and might indeed be really good.
“I thought of walls and paint of white faintly colored with blue. It was just about what you suggested for Dorothy’s room, only blue instead of pink; and it seemed to me that there might be blue birds—for happiness, you know—skimming along the walls, up near the top.”
“One of those big Chinese rugs that is almost all white, but has a little blue, would be lovely, wouldn’t it?” cried Helen, seizing the idea.
“Several small ones would be better,” returned Miss Graham, “because a baby’s room has to be kept so spick and span that you want to have light rugs that are easy to take up and clean.”
“You know those little round seats that you sometimes see in railway waiting rooms?” asked Ethel Blue.
Miss Graham said she had noticed them.
“Don’t you think one would be cunning for Elisabeth? The seat part ought to be awfully low and there could be light blue cushions on it. And then I think it would be fun if there was a low bench running around two sides of the room, with cushions of the same color on it. It would do for a table and a seat both.”
“There could be light blue cushions on the seat”
Miss Graham thought the idea was capital.
“How would you paint them?” she asked.
“Wouldn’t a sort of bluish-white like the wood-work be pretty,” asked Ethel Blue. “You know that shiny paint that is so highly polished that the baby’s finger marks won’t show on it.”
Ayleesabet’s Goldfish
“Enamel paint,” translated Miss Graham. “I think it would be very pretty, and I should have all the little chairs and tables painted the same way. There are a lot of little things that would be charming in the nursery,” she continued. “You can have a solid table, whose top lifts off, disclosing a sand-pile inside. And some parts of that seat around the room ought to lift up so that the baby can put away her own toys in the box underneath the cushions.”
“I thought a great big doll’s house might fit into one corner so that it would be two-sided,” said Ethel Blue. “If the lower floor was all one room the baby could walk right in and sit down with the dolls.”
“Do you think she could keep still long enough to make a real visit?” laughed Helen.
“You’ll want to interest her in plants and animals as she grows up,” suggested Miss Graham. “You might begin even now by having an aquarium with a few water plants and some gold fish and you must arrange to have it on a good solid stand so that it won’t tip over if Elisabeth should happen to throw her fat little self against it. I suppose she’s too small to have had any regular training as yet?” she continued, turning to Mrs. Smith.
“Miss Merriam, who is taking care of her, is trying some of the Montessori ideas.”
“I thought perhaps she was. Madame Montessori tries to make all her training a natural outcome of the children’s lives and to develop them to use what they know in their daily occupations. If Elisabeth had a clothes-closet small enough for her to hang up and take down her own dresses and coats and rompers, I think Miss Merriam would find that she would be trying to put them on and fasten them herself very soon.”
“Wouldn’t a clothes pole about three feet high be too cunning for words,” exclaimed Ethel Blue, and Dorothy cried, “Do let us have all these things, Mother. Elisabeth will look like a little white Persian kitten, trotting around in this blue and white room!”
“Had you made any plans for your own room, Mrs. Smith?” asked Miss Graham.
“Oh, Aunt Louise, I do wish you’d have one of those gray rooms, with scarlet lacquer furniture,” cried Helen eagerly.
Before Mrs. Smith could answer, Miss Graham had interposed a soft objection.
“I wouldn’t,” she said. “A room like that has several reasons for non-existence. They are very handsome because the real scarlet lacquer is beautiful in itself, and it’s valuable too, but a room whose chief appeal to the eye is scarlet is not restful.”
“You think scarlet is not a proper color for a bed-room,” responded Helen.
“Not at all suitable to my way of thinking. It’s exciting, rather than soothing. Another objection to it here is that a room containing such a vivid color should be a dark room, and all of your bed-rooms are splendidly light. But the most serious objection to my mind, is this. Just step out here in the entry with me for a minute.”
They all followed Miss Graham on to the landing at the head of the stairs.
“In a house as small as this,” she said, “you can see from the hall into all the bed-rooms. That means that from the decorator’s point of view, the entire floor ought to be harmonious. Behind us, for instance, is the baby’s delicate blue nursery. Just ahead is Dorothy’s apple-blossom room. Do you think that a room of gray and scarlet and black is going to be harmonious with those delicate tints?”
They saw her meaning at once and agreed with her that it would not be suitable.
“I decorated a small apartment last winter,” she said, “that turned out very happily. The sitting room was one of these scarlet lacquer rooms and the bed-room was done in tones of pale green and dull orange. You felt as if you were sitting in an orange grove in Florida on an evening when a frost was expected and they were burning smudges to warm the trees.”
“I know,” cried Dorothy, “I’ve seen them do that. You see the oranges gleaming through the misty smoke, and it’s all hazy and beautiful.”
“It turned out well in this room that I did,” said Miss Graham, modestly, “but if you accept the blue and pink colorings for the other rooms here,” she said, turning to Mrs. Smith with a smile, “I’m afraid your own room will have to be of some delicate tone to harmonize with them.”
“There are certain shades of yellow, that would be suitable,” returned Mrs. Smith.
“A primrose yellow,” answered Miss Graham, “would be charming, and it would not be hard to find a lovely chintz, that would give you just the spring-like atmosphere that you’d enjoy having about you all the time.”
“I think we’re going to have this floor a little piece of spring all the year around,” said Ethel Blue; and again Miss Graham flashed at her a look of understanding.
After they had shown all the rest of the house to Miss Daisy the family party gathered on the brick terrace outside of the drawing room to investigate lemonade and little cakes. The Ethels had brought the lemonade from home in a thermos bottle which kept it cool and refreshing, and that morning Dorothy had made some “hearts and rounds” which proved most appetizing with the cool drink.
A few canvas chairs which Mrs. Smith had sent over from home, so that she might have something to sit down on when she visited the new house, were all the furniture of the veranda, but the girls found several boxes which the workmen had left, and they laid planks on them and made benches that were entirely comfortable. A similar arrangement with the boxes turned on their ends provided a little table on which they placed the refreshments. Paper cups answered every necessary purpose, although they were not beautiful, and paper plates held the hearts and rounds just as well as if they had been china.
They were all a little tired after walking about the house for so long a time, and those of them who had chairs leaned back with satisfaction and looked over the low parapet to the adjoining meadow with its brook and its cluster of woods at the upper end. Beyond the fields the Emersons’ house could be seen dimly through the trees.
“We wondered in the springtime whether we should be able to see this house from Grandfather’s house,” said Ethel Brown. “I haven’t looked lately, but I guess we can, or else we shouldn’t be able to see Grandfather’s house from here.”
“The line of those far-away mountains is very beautiful against the sky,” Miss Graham noticed, with her keen observation of everything that added to the loveliness of the landscape.
“They are far enough away to have a blue haze hanging over them,” said Mrs. Smith, “and they give you a feeling that our quiet country scene here has a great deal of variety after all.”
“Your house is admirably placed to make the most of every beauty around you,” said Miss Daisy, “and I hope you’ll allow me to compliment you on the way it is turning out. You know they say that you have to build two or three houses in order to build one exactly to your satisfaction, but I should think that you were almost accomplishing that with your first attempt.”
“I am glad you like so many things about it,” said Mrs. Smith. “Dorothy and I would be pleased with almost any house that really belonged to us, for we’ve had nothing of our own for many years, but of course it is a tremendous satisfaction to have this develop into something that is beautiful and livable too.”
“You’ve added so many happy touches,” said Miss Graham. “Take for instance this terrace. A brick terrace always makes me think of some old country house in England, with its dark red walls buried among the brilliant green foliage. So many of those houses have terraces like this, partly roofed like yours, and wide enough to be really an extra room.”
“Aunt Louise’s terrace is really two extra rooms,” said Ethel Blue, “because it opens from the drawing room and also from the dining room.”
“We’re going to have all our meals out here in pleasant weather, whenever it’s warm enough,” said Dorothy.
“I can see you’re sufficiently afraid of New Jersey mosquitoes to have a part screened.”
“It’s the only prudent thing to do,” returned Mrs. Smith. “Jersey mosquitoes are really more than a joke, but if you have this wire cage to get into you can defy them. You can see that at the end of the terrace opposite the dining room our cage covers the whole of the floor, while up at this end only a part is wired in. In the evening when the buzzers are buzzing we can take shelter behind the screen, but in the daytime we can sit outside as we’re doing now.”
“Are you going to glass it in winter? I see you have a radiator.”
“There are to be long glass sashes that fit into the same grooves that hold the screens now. The open fire will take off the chill on autumn mornings and the radiator ought to keep us warm even when the snow is banked against the glass.”