Ethel Morton at Sweetbriar Lodge Part 29

"We're going to remember whenever we look at pictures again," said Ethel Brown.

"And there are lots of things in it that we shall think about when we look over the decorating in our house," insisted Dorothy.

"What I thought was the nicest of all was the way Miss Graham taught us.

It was just like talking. I think she is awfully nice," was Ethel Blue's decision.

CHAPTER XV PREPARATIONS FOR THE HOUSEWARMING

The trip to the Metropolitan Museum gave every member of the party a new set of words for her vocabulary. They looked at pictures with opened eyes and talked of their "composition" and "balance." They were all of them more or less interested in photography and now they tried to take photographs that would be real pictures.

"It isn't so easy to make a picture by selecting what you want to have and leaving out the things you don't want," said Roger to Helen one morning as they walked toward Sweetbrier Lodge, "when the things are right there in the landscape and won't get out of the camera's way. A painter would leave out that stupid old wooden house in the field there, but he'd leave in the splendid elm bending over it. Now if I 'shoot' the elm I've got to 'shoot' the house, too."

"The only way out is to take the house at some angle that will show off any good points it may have," declared Helen, wrinkling a puzzled brow.

"Then as likely as not you'll have to take the tree on the side where the lightning hit it and peeled off all its bark," growled her brother gloomily.

"That just shows that a photographer has to be more skilful than a painter," she said. "The painter can do what he likes, but the photographer has to get good results out of what is set before him."

"And as for balance--if nature happens to have placed things in balance, well and good; but if she didn't what can you do about it?"

"Nothing, my child, unless you introduce some object that you have some power over. Put in a girl or a dog or a horse somewhere where their weight will bring about the result you want."

"You can't carry girls and dogs and horses round with you," objected Roger, who was in a depressed mood this morning and found difficulties in every suggestion.

"You've got enough sisters and cousins for the girls, and you can take Christopher Columbus around with you in your pocket to play the four-footed friend," laughed Helen.

"Speaking of Columbus--are we going to celebrate Columbus Day this year?"

asked Roger, as he deftly inserted a new spool of film. "It's just luck James and I being here at all, you know. We'd like to do something to celebrate being exposed to scarlet fever as soon as we got to Boston, and being sent home for it to incubate, and then having nothing hatch!"

"Haven't you heard? Aunt Louise is going to have her housewarming on October 12, Columbus Day? She has asked the Club to do something appropriate."

"I thought the Watkinses had asked us to go into New York to see the parade."

"They have. That won't interfere with us. They'll come out here later and then we'll do something in the evening in the new attic to amuse Aunt Louise's guests."

"Any idea what?"

"I've got an idea in the back of my head. I'll have to talk it over first with the girls to see if we can manage the costumes. If we can I think it will be mighty pretty."

Roger nodded absent-mindedly. He had perfect confidence in his sister's good judgment and he was willing to do his part for his aunt's sake as well as for the good name of the Club.

"What are you taking?" Helen asked him after they had roamed about the new place for a time. "You seem to be using a lot of film."

"I am. I thought I'd take the new house and garden from every point of view I could, inside and out, and make two or three portfolios of them and send them to Father and Uncle Richard, as they'd probably like to have them."

"What a perfectly darling idea! Isn't Aunt Louise delighted?"

"She seems to be," returned Roger.

"You knew she had asked Uncle Richard to come up for her house-warming?"

"Father, too; but it's dollars to doughnuts they won't be able to come, so I thought I'd do these any way."

"Father won't be able to, but Uncle Richard may."

"He'll be glad to have the prints even if he has seen the original places."

"Perhaps he'll like them better on that account."

"I think I should. It would be like having your memory ill.u.s.trated."

"Are you going to do the rockery in the garden?"

"If the frost has left anything."

"It must be placed in just the right spot for there's a lot of it left. I pa.s.sed it early to-day and it looked almost as pretty as if it were summer."

"Dorothy certainly made a success of that."

"It was an afterthought, too."

"I believe the chief reason it has been so lovely is that it was placed in a natural position. The rocks look as if they ought to be just where they are."

"Mrs. Schermerhorn's rockery looks as if she had said, 'Lo, I'll have a rockery,' and then she stuck it right in the middle of her lawn where no collection of rocks has been for twenty years."

"And she has hot-house ferns in it!"

The brother and sister laughed delightedly at their neighbor's ideas of natural beauty.

"Perhaps it was fortunate that Dorothy didn't have a hot-house to draw on," said Roger, moving from one side to another of his cousin's rockery in order to get the best view of its remaining loveliness.

"Dorothy has too much sense. In the first place she snuggled hers in here under the trees, just the way the rocks are naturally over in FitzJames's Woods. Then she brought over here exactly the plants she found there."

"It had to look as if it were a bit of the woods, didn't it?"

"Do you want me to be in this picture?"

"You look too dressed up."

"Thank you! This is a middy I've worn all summer, and I'm just wearing out the rags of it on Sat.u.r.days."

"Nevertheless, you dazzle me."

"That's a polite way of saying you don't want me in the foreground. You'd better put in what Miss Daisy calls 'contemporaneous human interest.' I'm a great addition to any picture in which I appear."