Ethel Morton at Sweetbriar Lodge Part 22

"Sometimes during a thunder shower," she said, "I've seen awfully queer colors over in that meadow."

"The air is charged with electric particles sometimes," explained Miss Daisy, "and you are looking through them. You get different color effects during an ordinary rain storm, too."

"I think rain over that meadow is going to be one of the prettiest things Dorothy will see from this terrace," said Ethel Blue.

"She will have a long sweep to watch and a shower moves sometimes fast and sometimes slowly, so there will be opportunity to notice many changes," suggested Miss Graham.

"I wonder if Aunt Louise is going to have electric lights out here on the porch," said Ethel Blue. "They will draw the mosquitoes like everything."

"But she won't mind that because she can stay inside of her wire cage,"

answered Miss Daisy. "Surely she's going to have electric lights. Don't you see the wires already put in?"

"Of course," answered Ethel Blue. "How stupid of me! Those black ends are poking out all over the house and somehow I never thought what they were for."

"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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 gla.s.s. 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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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.