Ethel Morton at Sweetbriar Lodge Part 13

"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.

CHAPTER VII CLOSETS AND STEPMOTHERS

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 cl.u.s.ter 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 gla.s.s it in winter? I see you have a radiator."

"There are to be long gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s."

"With palms and rubber plants and rugs and wicker chairs and tables--I suppose you'll have wicker?" Mrs. Morton interrupted herself to inquire of her sister-in-law.

"Yes, wicker, but we haven't decided between brown or green," and Mrs.

Smith turned appealingly to Miss Graham.

"Neither, I should say. Don't you think a dull dark red, a mahogany red--would be pretty with this brick floor?"

"And against the concrete wall. I do; and it ought not to be hard to find rugs with dull reds and greens that will draw all those earthy, autumnal shades together."

"You might have one of those swinging settees hanging by chains from the ceiling."

"Dorothy would enjoy that."

"So would we," interposed Ethel Brown. "I seem to see myself perching on it, waving my lemonade cup."

"Don't ill.u.s.trate all over me," remonstrated Ethel Blue, dodging the flowing bowl.

"I like very much the seclusion you've gained by building up the wall at the end of the terrace on the side toward the road," said Miss Graham.

"We found that people could see from the road any one sitting on the terrace, although we're so high here," said Mrs. Smith, "but with the parapet built up at that end, they can't see anything, even though there is an opening in the wall."

"And the window frames a lovely picture of the meadows across the road from you."

"I don't see," said Ethel Brown, "why you always call your living room a drawing room, Aunt Louise."

"It isn't a living room," returned Mrs. Smith. "A living room is really a room which is used both as a sitting room and a dining room. No room which is used for only one of those purposes should be called a living room."

"Lots of people do," insisted Ethel Brown.

"But they are not right," returned her aunt.

"Drawing room seems a very formal name for it," Helen said. "Of course we're used to it, because Grandmother Emerson always calls her parlor a drawing room, but she has a huge, big room, so my idea of a drawing room is always something immense."

"Perhaps it is rather old-fashioned and stately," admitted Mrs. Smith; "but the drawing room is simply a place where the family _withdraws_ to sit together and talk together, and it need not be any more formal than the people who use it. But I protest that my drawing room or sitting room, or whatever it may be, shall not be called a living room, because it is not devoted to eating as well as sitting."

"I am glad you make that distinction," said Miss Graham. "So many people are careless about using the word and nowadays you seldom find a real living room except in a bungalow in the country where people are living very informally during the summer, and where s.p.a.ce is limited. There's another thing about your house that I like exceedingly," she continued, "and that is your closets."

Mrs. Morton, who had joined the party on the terrace, laughed heartily at this praise.

"That ought to please you, Louise," she said, and added, turning to Miss Graham, "Louise has spent more time inventing all sorts of cupboards and closets than in drawing the original plan of the house, I really believe."

"I know it wasn't wasted time," returned Miss Graham. "I have every sympathy with a craze for closets. You can't have too many to suit me. Do you remember that room at Mt. Vernon entirely surrounded by cupboards and closets? I always thought Washington must have had an extraordinarily orderly mind to want to have all his dining room belongings carefully placed on shelves behind closed doors!"

"I wonder how many different kinds of closets we have," murmured Dorothy, beginning to count them up on her fingers. Everybody tossed in a contribution, naming the closet which she happened to remember.

"A coat closet near the front door," said Ethel Brown.

"Clothes closets in every bed-room and two extra ones in the attic,"

added Mrs. Smith.

"A dress closet with mirrors on the doors, that turn back to make a three-fold dressing gla.s.s. I envy you that comfort, Louise," said Mrs.

Morton.