Just Sixteen Part 19

"No, but I should have had to drive nails and tacks in every time I wanted to hang up anything, and that would have spoiled the paper. And I want that to last a long, long time."

"What are you going to do with your furniture?" asked May, casting an eye of disfavor at the articles in question, a so-called "cottage" set, enamelled, of a faded, shabby blue.

"I am going to paint them," replied Eleanor, daringly.

"Eleanor Pyne! you can't!"

But Eleanor could and did. Painting is by no means the recondite art which some of its professors would have us suppose. Eleanor avoided one of the main difficulties of the craft, by buying her paint ready mixed and qualified with "dryers." She chose a pretty tint of olive brown. Ned took her bedstead apart for her, and one by one she carried the different articles to a little-used attic, where, equipped in a long-sleeved ap.r.o.n and a pair of old cotton gloves to save her fingers, she gradually coated each smoothly with the new paint. It took some days to finish, for she did not work continuously, but when done she felt rewarded for her pains; for the furniture not only looked new, but was prettier than it had ever been before during the memory of man. Her brother Ned was so pleased with her success, that he volunteered, if she would pay for the "stuff," to make a broad pine shelf to nail over the narrow shelf of her chimney-piece, and some smaller ones above, cut after a pretty design which he had seen in an agricultural magazine.

This handsome offer Eleanor gladly accepted, and when the shelves were done, she covered them with two coats of the same useful olive-brown paint.

There was still some paint left; and grown bold with practice and no longer afraid of her big brush, Eleanor essayed a bolder flight. She first painted her doors and her window-frames, then she attacked her floor, and, leaving an ample square s.p.a.ce in the middle, executed a border two feet and a half wide all round it, in a pattern of long diamonds done in two shades of olive, the darker being obtained by mixing a little black with the original tint.

"You see I have to buy my own carpet," she explained to the astonished and somewhat scandalized May; "and with this border a little square one will answer, instead of my having to get a great big thing for the whole floor."

"But sha'n't you hate to put your feet on bare boards?"

"That's just what I sha'n't do. Don't you see that the bureau and washstand and the bedstead and towel-frame and all the rest fill up nearly all the s.p.a.ce I have left for a border. What's the use of buying carpet for _them_ to stand on?"

May shook her head. She was not capable of such original reasoning. In her code the thing that generally had been always should be.

"Well, it seems rather queer to me--and not very comfortable," she said.

"And I can't think why you painted those shelves over the mantel instead of covering them with something,--chintz, now. They would have looked awfully pretty with pinked ruffles, you know, and long curtains to draw across the front like that picture you saw in 'Home made Happy.'"

"Oh, I shouldn't have liked that at all. I should hate the idea of calico curtains to a mantel-piece. It would always seem as if they were going to catch fire."

"But they _couldn't_. You don't have any fire," persisted May.

"No, but they would seem so. And I want my fire to look as if it could be lighted at any minute."

Eleanor's instinct was based on an "underlying principle." It is a charming point in any fireplace to look as if it were constantly ready for use. Inflammable draperies, however pretty, militate against this look, and so are a mistake in taste, especially in our changeful New England climate, where, even in midsummer, a little blaze may at any moment be desirable to cheer a dull day or warm a chilly evening.

But May herself was forced to admit that the room looked "comfortable"

when the square of pretty ingrain carpeting of a warm golden brown was tacked into its place, and the furniture brought back from the attic and arranged. Things at once fell into harmonious relation with each other, as in a well-thought-out room they should do. The creamy, bright paper made a pleasant background; there was an air of cheerfulness even on cloudy days. May could not understand the reason of this, or why on such days her reds and pinks and drabs and greens and blues never seemed to warm her out of dulness.

"I am sure my colors are a great deal brighter than yours," she would say; "I cannot imagine why they don't light up better."

Eleanor did not try for many evanescent prettinesses. In fact, she could not, even had she wished to do so, for her money was all spent; so, as she told her mother, she contented herself with having secured things that would wear, and a pretty color. She put short curtains of "scrim"

at her windows, and plain serviceable towels which could be often washed on her bureau and table-tops. The bureau was enlivened by a large, square scarlet pincus.h.i.+on, the only bit of finery in which Eleanor indulged. Amid the subdued tone of its surroundings it looked absolutely brilliant, like the famous red wafer which the great Turner stuck in the foreground of his dim-tinted landscape, and which immediately seemed to take the color out of the bright pictures on either side.

Later, when Eleanor had learned to do the pretty Mexican work, now in fas.h.i.+on, she decorated some special towels for her table and bureau, with lace-like ends, and a pair of pillow-covers. Meanwhile, she bore very well the knowledge that May and most of the other girls of their set considered her room rather "plain and bare." It suited her own fancy, and that satisfied her.

"I do like room to turn about in and not too many things, and not to smell of dust," she told her mother.

Here is Eleanor's budget of expenses, to set against May's:--

Wall-paper, twelve rolls $1.80 Use of brush and roller .18 Kalsomining ceiling 1.75 Picture-moulding 2.00 Two gallons of mixed paint, at $1.80 per gallon 3.60 Brush .30 Nine yards of ingrain carpeting at sixty-five cents a yard 5.85 Carpet thread and tacks .20 Pine shelving 1.00 Chintz for chair-cover put on by Eleanor herself 1.75 Satin and ribbon for cus.h.i.+on 1.12 ------ Total $19.86

This was two years ago. If you could take a peep at the rival rooms in Ninety-three and Ninety-four to-day, you would find Eleanor's looking quite as pretty as when new, or prettier; for she has used it carefully, and each year has added something to its equipments, as years will. When a girl has once secured a good foundation for her room, her friends are apt to make their gifts work in toward its further beautification.

With May it is different. Her room has lost the freshness which was its one good point. The chintz has become creased and a little faded, the muslin and scrim from repeated was.h.i.+ngs are no longer crisp, and look limp and threadbare; all the ribbons and scarfs are shabby and tumbled; while the green carpet and the blue wall "swear" as vigorously at each other as they did at first. May sighs over it frequently, and wishes she had tried for a more permanent effect. Next time she will do better, she avers; but next times are slow in coming where the family exchequer has not the recuperative powers of Fortunatus's purse.

The Moral of this simple tale may be divided into three heads. I object to morals myself as a wind-up for stories, and I dare say most of you who read this are no fonder of them than I am; still, a three-headed moral is such a novelty that it may be urged as an excuse. The three heads are these:--

1. When you have only a small sum to spend on renovations, choose those that will last.

2. Ingenuity and energy count for more than mere money can.

3. Once make sure in a room of convenience, cheerfulness, and a good color, and you can afford to wait for gimcracks--or "Jamescracks"--or any of the thousand and one little duds which so many people consider indispensable features of pleasantness. Rooms have their anatomy as well as human beings. There must be a good substructure of bones rightly placed to underlie the bloom and sparkle in the one; and in like manner for the other the laws of taste, which are immutable, should underlie and support the evanescent and pa.s.sing fancies and fas.h.i.+ons of every day.

THE SORROWS OF FELICIA.

It was a pretty chamber, full of evidences of taste and loving care.

White curtains draped the windows and the looking-gla.s.s. There was a nice writing-table, set where the light fell upon it exactly as it should for convenience to the writer. There was a book-shelf full of gayly bound books, a pretty blue carpet, photographs on the faintly tinted blue wall,--somebody had evidently taken pains to make the room charming, and just as evidently to make it charming for the use of a girl. And there lay the girl on the sofa,--Felicia, or, in schoolroom parlance, Felie Bliss. Was she basking in the comfort and tastefulness of her room? Not at all! A volume of "In Memoriam" was in her hand. Her face was profoundly long and dismal. She murmured mournful lines over to herself, only pausing now and then to reach out her hand and fill a tumbler from a big jug of lemonade which stood on a little table beside her. Felie always provided herself with lemonade when she retired to her bedroom to enjoy the pleasures of woe for a season.

From the door, which was locked, sounded a chorus of knocks and irreverent voices.

"Sister, are you in there?" demanded one.

"Are you thinking about Life, sister?" asked another.

"Have you got your sharp-pointed scissors with you?" cried the first voice. "Oh, Felie, Felie, stay your rash hand."

"We like lemonade just as much as you," chimed in Dimple, the youngest of the four.

"Let us in. We are very thirsty, and we long to comfort you," said voice the second, with a stifled giggle.

Felicia paid no attention whatever to these observations, only murmured to herself,--

"But what to her shall be the end?

And what to me remains of good?

To her perpetual maidenhood--"

"Who is 'her'?" demanded that bad Jenny through the door. "If you mean Mrs. Carrington, you are all wrong. May Curtis says her engagement is announced to Mr. Collins."

"Oh, children, do go away!" cried Felie in a despairing tone.

"Forgive these wild and wandering cries, Confessions of a wasted youth; Forgive them where they fail in truth, And in Thy wisdom make me wise."

"Hear her!" said Betty outside. "She's having it very badly to-day. I wish I knew Tennyson. I should like to tell him what I think of his writing a horrid, melancholy, caterwauling book, and making the Bliss family miserable. Felie, if you've drunk up all your lemonade, you might at least lend us the pitcher."

It was no use. Felicia either did not, or would not, hear. So, with a last thump on the panels of the long-suffering door, the trio departed in search of another pitcher.

If anybody had told Felie Bliss, at seventeen, that she really had not a grief in the world worthy of the name, she would have resented it deeply. She was a tall girl, whose bones and frame were meant for the use of a large woman, when their owner should have arrived at all that nature meant her to be, but who at this period of her life was almost startlingly long and thin. She had "outgrown her strength," as people say, which was Felie's only excuse for the almost tragic enjoyment which she took in mournful things. She was in fair health, and had an excellent appet.i.te, and a real school-girl love for raisins, stick-cinnamon, sugar-plums, and soda-water; tastes which were highly at variance with the role which she wished to play,--that of a sweetly-resigned and long-suffering being, whose hopes had faded from earth, into the distant heaven toward which she was hastening. Felie's sweet-tooth was quite a trial to her; but she struggled with it, and resisted enjoyment as far as was possible with her naturally cheerful disposition.