FURNITURE MAKING
It did not take the women long to adjust themselves to life at Rose
House, and as for the children, they loved it from the first. It was a
great international gathering that was sheltered on the old farm. Mrs.
Schuler was German; Moya, Irish. Mrs. Peterson, a Swede, occupied the
rooster room with her baby and her flaxen-haired daughter of three;
Mrs. Paterno, an Italian, found good pasturage among the cows of the
violet room for her black-eyed boys of two and four; Mrs. Tsanoff, a
Bulgarian, told the Matron that her twin girl babies were too young to
pay attention to the kittens on the curtains of the yellow room; while
Mrs. Vereshchagin, a Russian, discovered that the puppies of the blue
room were a great help to her in holding the attention of her boys of
three and five when she was putting them to bed.
Mrs. Schuler shook her head doubtfully when she took down their names
and nationalities in her notebook on the day of their arrival.
"If we get through the summer without quarrels over the war it will be
a miracle!" she exclaimed to her husband.
But she found that the poor creatures were too weary, too sad, too
physically crushed to have spirit enough left to fight any battles,
even those of words. With almost every one of them there had been a
tragedy such as often comes to the immigrants who reach the United
States equipped for success only with strong muscles--a tragedy of
wasted hope and broken courage and failing vigor if not of death. Mrs.
Paterno was the only one of them who could sympathize with Moya's
widowhood; her husband had seen the Black Hand death sign a few months
before, had disregarded it and had been stabbed in the back one night
as he came home from his work.
Conversation was not carried on fluently among them. They met on the
common ground of English, but not one of them could speak it well, each
one translated phrases of her own tongue quite literally, and the
meaning of the whole talk was largely a matter of guesswork. What they
did understand was nature's language of motherhood. They were content
to sit for hours on the veranda or in the grove or behind the house,
preparing vegetables for Moya, chattering about their babies and
explaining their meaning by gestures that seemed to be perfectly
understood.
The women had daily duties to perform according to a schedule worked
out by Mrs. Schuler, who apportioned to each a share of the general
work of the house in addition to the care of her own room and the
washing for herself and her children. With so many fingers flying the
tasks were soon done, and then they sat on the porch or in the grove
among the sweet-smelling pines, or walked in the pasture or up and down
the lane leading to the main road. Once in a while they went to
Rosemont, but for the most part they were too languid to care to walk
far and too glad of the change and the rest and quiet to want to weary
themselves unnecessarily.
The boys had built a platform across the back of the house, and it was
here that they did their carpentry, an awning sheltering them from the
sun or rain. A cupboard at one end held their tools, and their partly
finished articles were neatly stacked in a corner. As they got out
their tools now James made a confession.
"To tell you the honest, unvarnished truth, I'm tired of making chairs.
It seems as if we'd never have enough."
"It takes an awful lot to furnish a house," commented Roger wisely,
"and you know we had very few given us so if we want enough we have to
make them."
"We've got all the chairs you've done upholstered all they're going to
be," said Ethel Brown. "Why can't Ethel Blue and I each make a high
chair?"
"No reason at all," agreed Roger quickly. "You've watched James and me
and seen our really superior workmanship; imitate it, my child!"
The girls were already turning over the boys' supply of boxes to select
those suitable for the chairs for the children. They took four that
had held lemons or other fruit and were tall and narrow when stood on
end. The boards they were made of were very light but quite solid
enough to hold the weight of a small child. To make it firm upon the
ground, however, they sawed a piece of heavy plank a little larger than
the end upon which the box was to stand and nailed it on from the
inside.
When the high chair was done the boys complimented their co-workers on
the success of their first experiment.
"I hardly could have done it better myself," said Roger grandly.
All the high chairs were covered with blue and white cretonne to match
the blue and white of the dining room and the girls set to work to tack
on the outside covering and to cut out the covers of the small cushions
that were to make the seat and back comfortable. The cushions
themselves they had made from ticking filled with excelsior when they
had calculated the number of high chairs they must have.
The boys, meanwhile were constructing two chairs of quite different
build. One was a heavy chair for the hall or the veranda, its original
condition being a packing box a foot and a half deep, about twenty
inches wide and three or four feet long. This also was set on end, and
the other end and the cover were laid aside to be used in making the
seat and in shutting in the openings below the seat.
"How are you going to fasten that seat so it won't let the sitter down
on the floor?" inquired Ethel Blue, as James explained what he was
going to do.
"Do you see these cleats, ma'am? These are each a foot long. I nail
one of these standing up straight at each edge of the sides and the
back--six of them altogether. Then I lay three other cleats across
their tops--thusly."
"O, you've made a sort of framework that will support the seat! I get
that!" exclaimed Ethel Blue.
"All you have to do now is to nail your seat boards on to those
horizontal cleats and it's as firm as firm can be."
"Aren't you going to do something with those sides--those arms, or
whatever you call them?" inquired Ethel Brown. "They seem sharp and
uncomfortable and in the way to me."
Both boys studied the chair seriously before answering. Then they took
a pencil and paper and consulted.
"I should think it would look pretty well to cut out a right angle on
each aide," suggested James. "That would leave a sort of wing effect
like a hall porter's chair, only not so high, and at the same time it
would make an arm to rest your elbow on. How does that strike you ?"
Roger nodded. "It hits me all right. I was thinking of a curve
instead of a right angle, but the right angle will be easier to make.
Go ahead."
So the right angle was decided on and James proceeded to cut it.
Roger, meanwhile, had been sorting out the wood he needed for a chair
of another pattern.
"I wish Dorothy would heave in sight," he growled as he piled some half
inch thick strips in one heap. "She told me she'd tell me all she knew
about chair legs when I reached this stage of proceedings."
"She will," answered a cheerful voice, and gray-eyed Dorothy appeared
from the house. "I felt in my bones that you'd be beginning this lot
this afternoon, so I ambled over to see if I could help in any way."
"Keep right on ambling till you reach this end of the platform and tell
me whether you said that chair legs could be made of this stripping or
whether I'll have to get solid pieces, square-ended, you know, joist or
scantling or whatever it's called."
"Strips will do, only you'll have to use two for each leg. Nail them
together at right angles. It will make a two-sided leg, but it will be
plenty strong enough, though perhaps not truly handsome."
"If handsomeness means solidity--no. Still, they'll do. Can you give
me the lengths for these strips?" and Roger waved his saw at his cousin
as if he were so impatient to begin that he could not wait to study out
the lengths for himself.
"For the one I made for the attic," replied his cousin, "I cut four
strips each two inches wide and twenty-one inches long for the front
legs and four strips each two inches wide and twenty-five inches long
for the back legs. Then there were two two-inch strips seventeen
inches long to go under the seat to strengthen it front and back, and
two two-inch strips each thirteen inches long to go under the seat and
strengthen it on the sides. That's all the stock you need except the
box."
"I suppose you've got a particular box in mind to fit those sizes."
"Those sizes fit the box, rather. Yes, I got a grocery box that was
about eighteen inches long and thirteen wide and eleven deep. I saw
one here just like it before I gave you those measurements, so you can
go ahead sawing while I pull off one side of the box--the cover has
gone already but we don't need it."
Quiet reigned for a few minutes while they all worked briskly.
"Now I'm ready to put this superb article together," announced Roger.
"How high from the ground does the seat go?"
"Nail your cleats across with their top edges fifteen inches from the
ground and nail the bottom of the box on to the cleats. See how these
two-sided legs protect the edges of the box as well as make it decent
looking?"
"So they do," admitted Roger. "They aren't so bad after all."
"I think those sides are going to be too high," decided Dorothy after
examining the chair carefully and sitting down in it. "Don't you think
it pushes your elbows up too high?"
Roger tried it and thought it did.
"Suppose you saw those sides down about five inches."
Roger obeyed and Dorothy tried the chair again and pronounced it much
improved.
"It's comfy enough now, but these arms don't look very well, and they'd
be liable to tear your sleeves," she said. "Let's put on some strip
covers. They'll give a finish to the whole thing, and hide the end of
the two-sided legs and be smooth."
"Plenty of reason for having them. How many inches?"
"Twelve," answered Dorothy after measuring. "The top of the back needs
a strip cover, too. Cut another nineteen inches long. There, _I_
think that's not such a bad looking chair!'"
"Do you want cushions for those chairs?" inquired Ethel Brown,
appearing at the door with a piece of cretonne in her hand. "We've got
material enough for at least seat cushions for both of them."
"They'll be lots more comfy," admitted James, "if the excelsior crop is
still holding out."
"It is. I'll make them right off, and Ethel Blue can help you out
there."
She retired from view and sent out her cousin, and until the sun set
the two boys and Dorothy and Ethel measured and sawed and nailed, with
results that satisfied them so well that they did not mind being tired.