Ethel Morton at Sweetbriar Lodge Part 24

"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-was.h.i.+ng 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 d.i.c.ky 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 b.u.t.ton," 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 d.i.c.ky 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."

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 furnis.h.i.+ngs 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 furnis.h.i.+ng, 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. "n.o.body 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 b.u.t.tered 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."