“Then you haven’t noticed the lighting scheme that your Aunt and Dorothy have worked out. Let’s walk through the house now, and see just how she has arranged it.”
They went through the door of the screen into the enclosed portion and then into the dining room.
“Most people have one of those hang-down lights over the dining table,” said Ethel Blue. “I don’t see any wire for one here. I’m glad Aunt Louise isn’t going to have one. They never are the right height. You always have to be dodging under them to see the person across from you and the light shines on the table so brilliantly that you’re almost afraid to eat anything it falls on.”
Miss Graham laughed at Ethel’s vigorous protest, but she said that she, too, did not like a central light over the dining table.
“There is no need of a very brilliant light in a dining room,” she said. “You can see the people about the table without any difficulty in a subdued light and the general effect is far more beautiful than when people are sitting in a glare.”
“I think candle light is prettiest for the dining room,” said Ethel Blue.
“It is prettiest for the table,” replied Miss Graham. “The place where you really want a strong light is over the serving table behind the screen. You don’t want the maid to make any mistakes just because she can’t see clearly the dishes she is handling. There you need a strong light, but it can be placed so low that the screen shields it for the room and it will not interfere with the dimmer light of the rest of the room.”
“I suppose there ought to be other lights in the room,” said Ethel Blue. “You might find that there weren’t any candles in the house some evening and then it would be awful to have only this light over the serving table and none of them in other parts of the room.”
Miss Graham laughed at the possibility of such a disaster.
“There can be side-lights over the mantel-place,” she said, “electric lights that look like candles, with pretty candle shades, and one or two similar arrangements on the other side of the room.”
“Don’t you ever put a central light in the dining rooms you decorate?” asked Ethel Blue.
“Sometimes I let the light flow out from a dull, golden globe set into the ceiling over the table. The glass of the bowl is so thick that only a gentle radiance comes from it and yet it ekes out the light from the candles.”
“Ethel Brown is particularly pleased with the switch out in the vestibule,” said Ethel Blue. “You see you can come home when the house is all dark, and light the electricity in the hall by turning on the switch outside of the front door. Wouldn’t it be a good joke on a burglar, if he did it by accident some night when he was trying to get in,” laughed the young girl.
“It’s a capital invention,” said Miss Graham. “You notice your aunt has side lights here in the hall. Have you ever happened to be in a house where they were moving the furniture about and every piece that passed the hall chandelier gave it a rap?”
“That’s the way it is in the house we’re in now,” said Ethel. “Every time any one goes away and the express man brings down a trunk, he hits the light in the hall. I don’t know how many globes Aunt Marion has had broken that way.”
Upstairs they found the same side-lighting in all the bed rooms.
“The theory of it is,” said Miss Graham, “that when you want to see anything very clearly, you put in a light close to the place where you need to work. If you are going to arrange your hair before your dressing table, you want a light directly over your dressing glass. If you are going to read you turn on a light beside your reading stand. An upper light is usually for general illumination and a side light for real service.”
“A combination of the two lights makes a room ready for anything,” said Ethel Blue.
“I want you to notice particularly the fixtures that your Aunt Louise has selected for indirect lighting,” said Miss Graham. “She has chosen beautiful bowls that look like alabaster. They turn upwards and the bulbs are hidden in them. The strong glare is against the ceiling so that the people get only the reflected light. There is to be one of those bowls on a high standard in the front hall, and one at the turn of the stair-case. They look like ancient Roman urns, giving forth a marvelous radiance.”
“I think that will be prettier than some clear, engraved glass covers, that I saw the other day,” said Ethel Blue. “They showed the bulbs right through.”
“Far prettier,” agreed Miss Graham. “The whole object of this indirect light is to make your room seem to be lighted by a glow whose real origin you hardly know. Of course your intelligence tells you that there are electric bulbs up there, but you don’t want really to see them.”
“It seems to me that people must be thinking more about how to make things pretty than they used to,” said Ethel Blue. “When Ethel Brown’s grandfather built his house, Aunt Marion says it was thought very handsome by everybody in Rosemont. It has lots of convenient things in it, and plenty of brilliant lights, but the fixtures aren’t pretty and the idea seems to be to make just as big a shine as possible.”
“Nowadays,” said Miss Graham, “people try to make the useful things beautiful also whenever they can.”
“I’m glad to learn all about a house,” said Ethel Blue, “because some time I may have to keep house for my father and I want to know everything there is to know. Of course army people have to live in Uncle Sam’s houses, but still there are always different arrangements you can introduce, even in a government house.”
“I’m sure you’ll be able to make useful everything you learn,” said Miss Graham, “and your father will be pleased with whatever makes the house lovelier and more comfortable.”
“I’ve always meant to ask whether you didn’t know my father,” said Ethel Blue. “He is at Fort Myer, near Washington.”
“Captain Richard Morton,” said Miss Daisy. “Yes, indeed. I know a great many of the officers and their families at Fort Myer. I’ve met your father and I know him well.”
“Isn’t he the dearest old darling that ever walked?” said Ethel Blue, bouncing with enthusiasm.
“He certainly is a very nice person,” agreed Miss Graham, smiling, “and he thinks he has one of the finest daughters who ever walked.”
“Does he really?” cried Ethel Blue. “I’m so glad he does! You see, I so seldom see him that sometimes I’m afraid he’ll forget all about me. Once when he came to Rosemont, I passed him in the street when he was walking up from the station, and he didn’t know me and I didn’t know him. Wasn’t that perfectly frightful?”
“That was too bad,” agreed Miss Graham.
“Somehow I’ve never thought of being able to live with him,” said Ethel Blue. “You know I’ve always lived with Aunt Marion, because my mother died when I was a little bit of a baby, but the other day somebody said something about my going to Father later on, and I haven’t been able to think of anything else since.”
“I know he wants you,” said Miss Graham.
“Has he spoken to you about it?”
“Yes, often.”
“I suppose I’ll have to be a million times older than I am now, before he thinks I’m able to take care of him,” said Ethel Blue.
“I don’t believe it will be a whole million years,” smiled Miss Graham.
“I shall feel dreadfully to leave Aunt Marion and Ethel Brown. I’ve never been away from Ethel Brown more than three or four days in my whole life,” said Ethel Brown’s twin cousin, “but if my father needs me, why of course, I must go.”
“Indeed you must,” returned Miss Graham, “and I’m sure he wants you just as soon as he can send for you.”
Ethel Blue was so overjoyed at this opinion, that she jumped up on the ledge on the top of the parapet running around the terrace, and danced with delight the fancy step—“One, two, three, back; one, two, three, back”—with which she and Ethel Brown were accustomed to express great satisfaction with the way in which life was treating them.
To Miss Graham’s horror, Ethel Blue’s enthusiasm blinded her eyes and her third back step took her off the parapet. She fell to the ground and rolled down the hill, her slender little body bouncing from rock to rock with cruel force and increasing speed.
Miss Graham gave a cry of distress and vaulted over the parapet with the ease which she had acquired in the gymnasium in her college days. Running the risk of rolling down hill herself, she bounded down the steep slope, and reached the foot almost as soon as did the body of the young girl, which lay very still, its head against the stone which had brought unconsciousness.
Miss Graham turned over the limp little form, shuddering as she saw the bruise on the forehead. She tried to lift it but found she could make no progress up the steep knoll. Again and again she called to the workmen in the house, and finally two of them appeared at an upper window and made gestures of understanding when she beckoned to them. They leaped down the hill with long strides, and soon were carrying Ethel Blue up to the terrace.
They laid her gently on the floor and ran to get water from the hydrant, while Miss Graham slipped off the young girl’s shoes, raised her feet upon a block of wood that happened to be near by, so that the blood might flow towards her heart, and gently chafed her wrists. When the water came, she dashed a shower of it from the tips of her fingers on the pale little face lying so quietly against the bricks.
“Will I run to de nex’ house an’ telephone for de doctor?” asked one of the men, and Miss Graham nodded an assent and added a direction to summon Mrs. Morton.
Before either her aunt or the doctor came, however, Ethel Blue returned to consciousness. Before she opened her eyes, she heard a soft, affectionate voice crooning over her, “My dear little girl, my poor little girl.”
She kept her eyes closed for a minute or two, so pleasant was this sound from the lips of Miss Graham whom she had grown to love so fondly. When at last she opened her eyes and saw Miss Daisy’s anxious face change its expression to one of delight, she almost felt that it was worth while to fall off a precipice to bring about such a result.
Mrs. Morton was acting as head nurse in the home hospital. Ethel Blue’s injuries from her fall were not serious, but besides the bruises on her forehead, she had numerous large black and blue spots all over her body and she had been so shaken that the doctor thought it was well for her to stay in bed for a day or two.
In addition to Ethel Blue, Dicky was laid low for the time being. He had gone over to his grandfather’s and as he was accustomed to run about the farm by himself, and as he usually stayed near some of the workmen, nobody paid any attention to him. This time, however, he went up into the pasture, where he found most of the cows lying down in the shade of the trees and meditatively chewing their cuds after their morning meal.
Dicky was not in the least afraid of cows, having been familiar with them from his babyhood. He therefore walked up to one of the prostrate creatures and sat down comfortably upon her neck, steadying himself by her nearest horn.
Nothing happened for a minute of two, for either his weight was so slight that the cow hardly noticed it, or else his position did not interfere with her comfort. After a time, however, he began to pull at her horns in time with the motion of her jaws, and this measured movement seemed to annoy her. Shaking her head, she rose, first behind, throwing her rider even farther forward than he was, and then in front, tossing him off altogether.
The distance to the ground was not great, but it was far enough for Dicky to be peppered with bumps and pretty well shaken. The cow paid no farther attention to him but walked off to a spot where she might be free from annoyance, and the little boy lay for some time on the ground before he could pull himself together and go to his grandfather’s. By the time he reached there, his bruises were already turning black and he was interesting both to himself and to his relatives, although he was manfully keeping back his tears. The doctor ordered him to bed for a day or two, and now he lay on a cot at one side of the large room which served as the family hospital, and Ethel Blue at the other, comparing their wounds, and receiving the attention of Mrs. Morton. She had finished reading one of the Br’er Rabbit stories to them when Ethel Blue introduced the subject that was so constantly in her mind.
“Did I tell you how I happened to fall off the terrace wall?” she asked her aunt.
“I wondered how you did it; you are usually so sure-footed.”
“I was talking with Miss Daisy about my going to live with Father by-and-by. You know I never thought of it until the other night when we were all together on the porch and Helen,—wasn’t it?—said something about it. I wish I didn’t have to wait to finish school before I can go to him.”
“Are you in such a hurry to leave us?” said Mrs. Morton, with a little sigh for the many years of loving care she had spent over this child, who was to her like one of her own.
Ethel Blue was conscience-stricken.
“You know, Aunt Marion, I love all of you just like my own people. Only it seems so wonderful to think about being with Father all the time that I can’t get it out of my mind—now it’s in my mind.”
“There are a good many things to be considered,” answered Mrs. Morton. “You know that an officer often has to be away from home and your father wouldn’t like to leave you alone.”
Ethel Blue’s face fell.
“If I only had somebody like Dicky’s Mary to stay with me,” she said, referring to the nurse who had always taken care of Dicky, and who had lived on with the family after he was too old to need a nurse.
“Perhaps your father might marry again and then there would be no difficulty about your being with him all the time.”
Mrs. Morton made the suggestion gently but Ethel Blue flushed angrily at once.
“I think that’s a perfectly horrible idea, Aunt Marion. That means a stepmother for me, and I think a stepmother is detestable.”
“Have you ever known one,” inquired Mrs. Morton coolly.
“No, I never have, but I’ve read a great deal about them and they’re always cross and mean and their stepchildren hate them.”
“Don’t you suppose that a great many stepchildren work up a dislike beforehand just because they read the same kind of stories that you seem to have been reading?” asked Mrs. Morton.
Ethel Blue was a reasonable girl, and she thought this over before she answered.
“Perhaps they do,” she said, although slowly, as if she disliked to admit it.
“I have happened to know several stepmothers,” said Mrs. Morton, “and I never have known one who was not quite as kind or even kinder to her stepchildren, than to her own children. A mother feels that she can do as her judgment dictates with her own children, but with her stepchildren she weighs everything with even greater care, because she feels an added responsibility toward them.”
“But she can’t love them as she does her own children,” said Ethel Blue.
“I think there is very little difference,” said her Aunt Marion. “I am not your stepmother but at the same time I am not your own mother, and I am not conscious of loving you any less than I love Ethel Brown. You are both my dear girls.”
“I love Father but I do think Father would be mean if he gave me a stepmother,” said Ethel Blue.
“But, wouldn’t you be mean if you objected to his having the happiness of a household of his own, after all these years when he has not had one?” returned Mrs. Morton promptly. “Your father has lived a lonely life for many years, and if such a thing should happen as his deciding to marry again, I can’t think that my little Ethel Blue would be so selfish as to make him unhappy—or even uncomfortable—about it.”
This was a new idea for Ethel Blue and she snuggled down under her covers and turned her head away to think about it.
Her aunt left her alone and the room was quiet except for the noise made by Dicky’s little hands, as he turned the pages of a picture book.
It was almost dark when Mrs. Morton came back with Mary, each of them bearing a tray with the supper for one of the invalids.
“I must say,” laughed Mrs. Morton, as she entered the hospital, “these are pretty hearty meals for people who call themselves ill.”
“My mind isn’t ill,” said Ethel Blue; “it’s just these bruises that hurt me,” and Dicky understood what she meant, for he told Mary, who was arranging his pillows, that his “black and blue thspotth were awful thore,” but that he was going to get up in the morning.
As Mrs. Morton leaned over Ethel Blue’s bed, the young girl put an arm around her aunt’s neck and drew her down to her.
“I’ve made up my mind not to be piggy if anything like that does happen,” she said, hesitatingly. “Do you know that it is going to happen?”
“No, I do not,” answered Mrs. Morton, “but I saw that you were in a frame of mind to make your father very unhappy if it should come to pass. You ought not to allow yourself to have such thoughts, even about an indefinite stepmother. They might easily turn into thoughts of real hatred for an actual stepmother.”
“But do you think there might be a stepmother some time or other?” asked Ethel Blue.
“Yes, dear, I do. Your father probably seems old to you, but he really is not very old and, as I said before, he has lived a lonely life for many years. You know it was fourteen years ago that your mother died, and since then he has had no home of his own and no loving companionship. He has not even had the delight of helping to bring up his little daughter. If he can make happiness for himself now, after all these years, don’t you think that his little daughter ought to help him?”
Ethel Blue nodded silently and ate her supper thoughtfully.
“While you two were taking your nap, I went to Sweetbrier Lodge,” said Mrs. Morton, by way of entertaining the invalids. “I am so much interested in the way that Aunt Louise has arranged for the maids. You know so many people have only a servant’s workroom, the kitchen; and the maids have no room to sit in after their work is done. Aunt Louise has been very thoughtful in all her plans. The laundry and the kitchen and the pantry between the kitchen and the dining room, all have the most convenient arrangements possible. Every shelf and cupboard is placed so that the number of footsteps that the kitchen worker must take will be reduced as greatly as possible. Then there are all sorts of labor saving arrangements. You saw those in the kitchen and the cellar. The electrician has been there daily fitting up an electric range and dish-washing machine. The wires in the kitchen are placed just where they will be most serviceable, and there are plenty of windows so that the room is bright in the day-time. Then just off the kitchen, there is a delightful little sitting room, with a porch opening from it. It has a view toward the garden and FitzJames’s woods, and it is to be prettily furnished.”
“There are two bed-rooms and a bath for the maids in the attic story,” said Ethel Blue. “They are going to be prettily furnished too.”
“Will they have a garden?” asked Dicky from his corner.
“Do you know?” Mrs. Morton turned to Ethel for an answer.
“I do understand now,” she replied, “why Dorothy insisted on having the herb garden down by the house. I thought it was just because it would be convenient to have the herbs near the kitchen, but she planted flowers there too, and now I see that it will be a pretty flower garden for the maids to enjoy and to cut for their own rooms.”
“There are two things about Aunt Louise that are interesting,” said Ethel Blue. “One is the way she always tries to make other people happy and comfortable.”
“She is naturally thoughtful and considerate,” said Mrs. Morton, “and she has had much unhappiness in her life and has happened to meet many people who are unhappy, so it has taught her to do all she can to brighten other people’s lives and to make them easier.”
“I don’t believe many people who are building a house would let a lot of children say what they thought would be nice about it,” said Ethel Blue.
“She wants Dorothy and all of you to learn about the new ways of building and fitting up a house,” returned Mrs. Morton, “and she knows how much fun it is to talk over such matters in a general pow-wow. Haven’t all of you had a good deal of fun out of it?”
“We certainly have,” replied Ethel Blue. “I liked fixing up Ayleesabet’s room particularly, because I suggested the idea, but we have all made suggestions for every room in the house. Aunt Louise has not agreed with all of them, but she always told us why she didn’t agree or why she didn’t like our ideas. She never was snippy about it, just because we were children. The other thing that is interesting in Aunt Louise, is the way she wants to have all sorts of new arrangements in a house.”
“Almost everybody does that,” answered Mrs. Morton.
“I don’t know anybody in Rosemont who has all the things that Aunt Louise has put in. People have vacuum cleaners now-a-days, that they move around from one room to another, but she has hers built in, so the dirt is drawn right down into the cellar. She has every kind of electric thing she has ever heard of, I do believe.”
“The electrician was there to-day as I told you, arranging wires in the kitchen.”
“I was trying to count up as I was lying here, all the things in the house that go by electricity. Of course there’s the door bell to begin with. Then there are all the lighting switches—the one in the vestibule and all the regular ones in the halls and rooms and a lot of them in the different closets, so that she never will have to struggle around in the dark for anything she is hunting for.”
“I saw a man putting in a little pilot light for the oven, to-day,” said Mrs. Morton.
“What’s that for?”
“So the cook can investigate the state of affairs in the oven. Sometimes it’s hard to say how far along a dish at the back of the oven is. This light enables you to make out whether it is browning properly or not.”
“The man who put in the summer water-heater called the little light that burns all the time in that, a ‘pilot,’” said Ethel Blue.
“The dumb-waiter that runs from the cellar up through the house to take up kindling or whatever needs to be taken up stairs, runs at the touch of an electric button,” said Mrs. Morton.
“I wish there had been an elevator for people,” said Ethel Blue.
“The house isn’t large enough to call for that,” said her aunt, laughing. “Dorothy and her mother are able to go up one or two flights of stairs without much suffering!”
Ethel laughed at the suggestion, and went on with her enumeration of the uses of electricity.
“The city water runs into the house, but do you know that Aunt Louise has had an extra pump fitted into a deep well at the back of the house, and that is to work by electricity? She was afraid the house was so high up that the power of the town water might be weak sometimes.”
“She’s prepared for anything, isn’t she? She’ll be quite independent if any accident should happen to the Rosemont reservoir.”
“You know the fittings of the laundry are electric.”
“And the electrician to-day was going to put in an electric hair dryer in the bath-room, so that a shampoo will require only a few minutes’ time.”
“I see where all of us girls visit Dorothy on shampoo day,” giggled Ethel Blue.
“She’ll be as popular as I used to be when our cherries were ripe,” her Aunt Marion smiled in return. “I never seemed to have so many friends as during the June days when I always entertained my guests by inviting them up into the cherry tree.”
“Was that the cherry tree on the right thide of Chrandfather’th houthe?” asked Dicky suddenly from the corner where he had been supposed to be dozing.
“The very same cherry tree, young man. I dare say you know it.”
“It’th too fat for me to thin up,” he said, “but nektht year I’m going up on a ladder the minute I see a robin flying off with the first ripe cherry.”
When the time came for having the interior decorating done in Sweetbrier Lodge and for getting the furniture, the U. S. C. felt that they were really in the very midst of a delightful experience. The attic was furnished with brown wicker, as Miss Graham had suggested. A small upright piano was brought up through a window, and this pleasant, quiet room at the top of the house, served to give Dorothy a spot for practising where she would disturb no one. Up here, too, she could keep any work that she was doing and merely put it into a chest that she had prepared for the purpose, whenever she wanted to leave it, or, if it was something that could not easily be moved, it might even be kept out upon the table and there would be no one to be annoyed by an appearance of untidiness.
The piano was to be a pleasure at the club meetings, for all the U. S. C. members liked to sing, and Helen was planning that they should wind up every meeting during the coming winter with a good stirring chorus before they separated for the afternoon.
On the bedroom floor, the furnishings were carried out as they had been planned, Elisabeth’s room in blue, Dorothy’s in pink, and Mrs. Smith’s in primrose yellow, and the two guest chambers in violet and a delicate, misty grey. The wood-work was painted ivory white and the floors were all of hard wood. Rugs in harmonious tints gave the desirable depths of tone to the color plan.
On this floor Mrs. Smith had a sewing room and also a small sitting room, where she could write business letters and be quite undisturbed. With the floor below came the really serious work of furnishing, the girls thought. The drawing room was the important feature of this floor.
“Here is the family hearth,” said Mrs. Smith to Dorothy, “and we want to make this room beautiful—one that people will like to come into and to stay in.”
“It must not be cold in color, then,” said Dorothy. “Nobody likes to stay in a chilly looking room.”
“And it ought not to be too warm in color,” said plump little Della, who suffered terribly from the heat in summer. “It just makes me perspire to think of some of the thick, heavy-looking rooms I’ve been in. They are only suitable for zero weather and we don’t seem to have any more zero weather nowadays.”
Mrs. Smith had allowed Dorothy to ask the club members to have cocoa with her on the afternoon when the final decisions were to be made. They had brought down from up-stairs some of the chairs and a table which had already been put into the bed-rooms. Dorothy and the Ethels had made cocoa and had baked some cocoanut cakes on the new electric oven, and they were all gathered in the drawing room, sipping their cocoa and looking about them at the possibilities of the room.
“Before we begin, tell me how you made these cakes,” said Margaret, who was always adding a new receipt to her cook book.
“We took half a pound of dried cocoanut and two ounces of sugar and three ounces of ground rice, and mixed them all up together. Then we beat the whites of three eggs perfectly stiff and stirred the froth thoroughly into the other things,” said Ethel Brown.
“Then we dipped out a tablespoonful at a time and put it on to a buttered baking tin, and baked it all in a quick oven for five minutes,” said Ethel Blue, “but we didn’t take the tin out, right off. We let the oven cool and the little cakes cook slowly for half an hour longer.”
“They do be marvellous good,” murmured James, and all the others agreed with him.
Miss Graham had come over with Margaret and James, but she said that she was not going to give her professional advice until it was asked for.
“I may as well tell you first of all,” said Mrs. Smith, “what my color scheme is for this room, and then you can help me with the details. I want the whole thing to be in tones of brown, lightened by yellow, and contrasted with that dull blue you see in Oriental rugs. Now, keep that scheme of color in your mind and work it out for me.”
“I think you must have told the painter about it before he did the wood-work,” guessed Margaret. “This wood-work is white, but a yellowish white that will be quite in harmony with your brown and gold scheme.”
“You’ve caught me,” smiled Mrs. Smith. “It had to be done, so I told him what I wanted. It’s successful, don’t you think so?” she asked, looking toward Miss Graham.
“Entirely,” approved Miss Daisy.
“The floors are hard wood, but I suppose you’re going to have a big brown and gold and blue rug,” said Helen.
“Certainly those colors, if I can find just the right thing,” said her aunt.
“I was with Mother the other day in a rug shop,” said Della, “and I saw beautiful Chinese rugs, with dull blue backgrounds and figures of brown and tan.”
“I’ve noticed,” said Helen, “that Oriental rugs have a great deal of red and green in them. I should think it might be hard to find rugs with just brown and blue.”
“I have discovered that it is,” said Mrs. Smith, “for I’ve already been on one or two searching trips. Still, those Chinese rugs that Della mentioned are always available, and if you hunt far enough you can get others with the brown note uppermost. What do you think about size?” she asked.
“Oh,” said Helen. “I seem to see in my mind’s eye a huge, great, splendid one in the middle of the room.”
“It would be a beautiful rug probably,” said Ethel Brown, “but I don’t know that I should like one big fellow as much as two smaller ones.”
“Why not?” asked Miss Graham.
“I don’t know that I can tell you,” answered Ethel Brown, blushing. “Perhaps it’s because it makes the room seem too big and grand, and the arrangement of smaller ones would break it up into smaller sections, and make it seem more home-like.”
Miss Daisy nodded as if she were satisfied, but made no comment.
“How do all of you feel about the size of the rugs?” inquired Mrs. Smith, and Helen put the question to vote.
They decided that they liked the idea of two or more rugs of medium size with little ones where they were needed instead of a very large one in the centre of the room.
“I think you’re right,” said Mrs. Smith, “and I think that it will be easier to find the smaller ones than the very large ones—and less expensive into the bargain,” she said, laughing.
“What is the furniture to be?” inquired Tom.
“Dorothy and I had a few antiques that have been kept for us all these years from my father’s house, and they have given us the note for the rest. They are mahogany, colonial in style, so we think that we must make the rest of the furniture harmonize with them.”
“Aunt Marion told me she saw some lovely reproductions of truly old chairs and tables and things,” said Ethel Blue. “I suppose you can make the room look as if every piece in it was a truly old one.”
“If I had money enough, I could undoubtedly find truly old pieces,” said Mrs. Smith, “but I think I shall content myself with the modern pieces in the old style.”
“At any rate, they will be stronger,” said Margaret. “We have some very old furniture, and since we put steam heat in our house, they’ve been falling to pieces as fast as they could fall.”
“How are the walls of this room to be treated?” asked James.
“There I want your help,” said Mrs. Smith.
“I saw a dark brown paper dashed with gold the other day, on the library wall at Mrs. Schermerhorn’s,” said Roger.
“Too dark,” cried the Ethels in chorus. “Mrs. Schermerhorn’s wood-work is dark and Aunt Louise’s is almost white.”
“There’s a kind of Japanese paper that looks like metal burlap,” said Margaret. “It has a little glint of gold in it.”
“That’s too dark, too, I think,” said Dorothy. “It ought to be something that will connect the yellow-white of the wood-work with the gold, which is the lightest tone in Mother’s color scheme.”
Again Miss Graham nodded her approval, although she said nothing.
“I saw a very wide pongee silk the other day that would be just about the right shade, if it could be put on like wall-paper,” said Ethel Blue. “It would be a little darker than this paint, and it would tie on to the gold in the rug or in any piece of furniture covering.”
Again Miss Graham nodded.
“And I don’t see why it couldn’t be stenciled,” said Ethel Brown. “Something like the walls upstairs in the apple-blossom room, only of course something that would be appropriate for this room. But even if you didn’t like that idea,” she went on, “I think the pongee silk alone would be beautiful.”
Mrs. Smith liked that idea, too, but she hesitated to give her final decision until she had examined a certain homespun linen which she had had recommended to her as a possible success from the point of view of color.
“Now that you have finished your cocoa, I want you to move your chairs over here, where you can look into the dining room,” she said. “You see, I’ve had the dining room separated from this room by folding doors; there will be door curtains also, but I want to be able to shut off the room entirely from this room if I choose. Now, while we talk about the furniture here, look into the dining room and get the shape of it into your minds, so that you can regard it as a sort of outgrowth of this room. Are you comfortable now?”
They said they were and went on to discuss the furniture.
“Will all of the pieces be upholstered with the same material?” asked Ethel Blue.
“Oh, no,” cried Ethel Brown. “Let’s have two or three different shades of brown, and one in the right shade of yellow and one or two in the same dull blue of the rug.”
Again Miss Graham nodded.
“You want to repeat in the furniture the colors of the rug,” she said. “They give you a wide range of tones because these Oriental rugs may have as many as twenty-five shades of blue, so finely graduated that you can hardly tell them apart, except with a reading glass. The brown and gold of the furniture will bring out the brown and gold of the floor covering and you must be careful that the yellow of the furniture is not so brilliant as to overpower the more delicate yellow of your walls. There should be a sort of scale from the yellowish white wood-work which is your highest note, down to the darkest shade of brown.”
“Now, that we’ve decided about the furniture, tell me what general idea you have for the dining room,” said Mrs. Smith. “I’m all excitement to hear what you have to say about the dining room, because it isn’t quite clear in my own mind, and I want to work it out with you.”
“You want it to be an outgrowth of this room,” said Helen, “and you don’t want it treated like an entirely separate room.”
“Since it is connected with this room by so wide an opening, when the doors are drawn back,” said her aunt, “it seems to me as if it ought to be in harmony with the coloring here.”
They all agreed with this idea.
“I suggest,” said Margaret, “that the whole room might be a little darker than this room, although decorated with the same colors.”
Miss Graham again approved this.
“It has the morning sun,” said Dorothy, “and at night through most of the year the gas is lighted at dinner time so it isn’t necessary to have it so bright as the other room.”
“Then why not have everything the same, except just a little deeper in tone,” said Ethel Blue. “Have the wood-work a trifle darker and find some material for the walls or have them color-washed a few shades darker than the pongee. The floor is a little darker than this anyway and one of the darker blue Chinese rugs will be lovely on it.”
“Mother’s china is blue Canton,” said Dorothy. “That will give blue touch that will harmonize with the rugs.”
They were all pleased with their decisions and were greatly pleased when Miss Graham approved their wisdom.
The electricians had put in the electric fixtures and they noticed that the dining room side lights of both the dining room and drawing room looked like sconces; that there was a glowing bowl of light in the ceiling above the dinner table; and that the half concealed lights were to give a pleasant radiance in the larger room, while plugs around the wall permitted the use of electric lamps for reading or sewing at many different points.
“How is this little reception room to be done, Mrs. Smith?” asked James as he roamed into a small room just beside the front door.
“This whole floor, all in all, is to have the same color scheme,” said Mrs. Smith. “I think this and the hall will be done like the dining room.”
“Come out now, and see the maid’s sitting room,” cried Dorothy. “It is the cunningest thing and so pretty.”
The wicker furniture had already come for this room and the attic, and they all exclaimed at the delicate shade of gray rattan which made a charming back-ground for cushions of flowered chintz.
“I think it’s a dear duck of a room!” said Ethel Brown.
“And see the roses on the walls!” exclaimed Dorothy. “And it opens on to a little porch that is going to be covered with rambler roses all summer, if I can possibly make them grow and blossom.”
“How many of you people can go to the Metropolitan Museum with me on Saturday?” asked Miss Graham. “I know you younger ones are all busy in school now, and the boys are getting ready to go to college, so that is your only day, for we want plenty of time.”
There was not one of them who could not go, so they arranged about trains and where they should pick up the Watkinses in New York, and separated with pleasant expectations of the very good time ahead of them.
Dicky, the Honorary Member of the United Service Club, had been considered too young to become a member of the party to visit the Metropolitan Museum. He had, however, begged so hard not to be left behind, that Helen and Roger had relented, and had promised to take him if he, in his turn, would agree not to bother Miss Graham by asking more than a million questions every ten minutes. He was also under bond not to stray away from the party.
As it turned out, however, the Honorary Member did not go to New York on the appointed day. He had planned an expedition of his own for purposes of investigation, and the results were such that he was not able to meet his other engagement later on.
Underneath his bobbed hair Dicky kept a sharp pair of ears and there was very little of the talk about his aunt’s new house that had escaped his attention. Among other things he had listened while his sisters and cousins had commented upon the manner in which the kitchen was equipped. The floor was concrete, the walls were of white tile, the shelves were of glass, and the cupboard doors of enameled metal.