CHAPTER VI

SPRING ALL THE YEAR ROUND

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."

"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."

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."

"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.