CHAPTER XIII

A GOLDEN COLOR SCHEME

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.