these ladies and children who travelled about with him were paper dolls
also. They belonged to Lizzie Bruce and her cousin Ernestine, who
between them owned several whole families of such. These families were
all large. None of the mamma dolls had less than twelve children, and
some of them had as many as twenty. Lizzie and Ernestine despised people
not made of paper, who had only two or three little boys and girls. In
fact, Lizzie was once heard to say of some neighbors with eleven
children, "They are the only really satisfactory people I ever
knew,--just as good as paper dolls;" and this was meant as the highest
possible compliment.
Lizzie lived in Annapolis, Md., and Ernestine in Hingham, Mass., so, as
you will see, there was a long distance between their homes. It took a
day and a half to make the journey, and the little cousins did not visit
each other more than once or twice a year. But the dolls went much
oftener. _They_ travelled by mail, in one of those long yellow envelopes
which lawyers use to put papers in, and Colonel Wheeler always went in
the same envelope to take care of them. When they came back from these
trips, Lizzie or Ernestine, whichever it chanced to be, would unpack
them, and exclaim delightedly, "How well the dear things look! So much
better for the change! See, mamma, how round and pink their faces have
grown!"
"I wouldn't advise you to depend so much on Colonel Wheeler," Lizzie's
mother would sometimes say. "These military men are rather uncertain
characters. I wouldn't send off all the dolls at once with him, if I
were you. And really, Lizzie, such constant journeys are very expensive.
There is never a stamp in my desk when I want one in a hurry."
"But, mamma, the children really _had_ to have a change," Lizzie would
protest, with tears in her eyes. "And as for the colonel, he is such a
good man, truly, mamma! He would never steal anybody else's family! He
takes beau-tiful care of the dolls, always."
"Very well, we shall see," answered mamma, with a teazing smile. But she
saw that Lizzie was in earnest, so she did not say anything more to
trouble her, and the very next day contributed seven postage-stamps to
pay for the transportation of a large party which Lizzie wanted to send
on to Hingham for a Christmas visit.
This party included, besides Colonel Wheeler, who as usual acted as
escort, Mrs. Allen, the wife of Captain Allen, her fourteen children,
her sister-in-law Miss Allen, her own sister Pauline Gray,--so called
because her only dress happened to be made of gray and blue
tissue-paper,--and Mrs. Adipose and her little girl. Mrs. Adipose, whose
name had been suggested by papa, was the fattest of all the dolls. Her
daughter was fat, too, and Ernestine had increased this effect by making
her a jacket so much too large for her that it could only be kept on
with a dab of glue. Captain Allen was a creature who had no real
existence. Lizzie meant to make a doll to represent him some day.
Meanwhile, he was kept persistently "at the front," wherever that might
be, and Mrs. Allen travelled about as freely as if she had no husband at
all. This Lizzie and Ernestine considered an admirable arrangement; for,
as Captain Allen never came home and never wrote, he was as little of an
inconvenience to his family as any gentleman can ever hope to be.
Well, this large and mixed company started off gayly in the mail-bag,
and in due time Lizzie heard of their safe arrival, that they were all
well, and that the baby "already looked better for the change." About
three weeks later another letter came, and she opened it without the
least qualm of anxiety, or any suspicion of the dreadful news it was to
bring. It ran thus:--
DEAR LIZ,--Mrs. Adipose grew a little home-sick. She began to
worry about Mr. Adipose. She was afraid he would have trouble
with the servants, or else try to clean house while she was
away, and make an awful mess all over everything. You never
could tell what men would do when they were left alone, she
said. So, as I saw she wasn't enjoying herself any more, and as
the baby and little Ellen seemed to have got as much good out of
the visit as they were likely to get, I sent them back last week
Friday, and hope you got them safely.
Lizzie dropped the letter with a scream of dismay. This was Saturday.
Last week Friday was more than a week ago. Where, oh, where were the
precious dolls?
She flew with her tragic tale to mamma, who, for all she was very sorry,
could not help laughing.
"You know I warned you against trusting too much to Colonel Wheeler,"
she said.
"Oh, mamma, it isn't his fault, I am sure it isn't," pleaded Lizzie. "I
have perfect confidence in him. Think how often he has gone to Hingham,
and never once didn't come back! He _would_ have fetched them safely if
he hadn't been interfered with, I know he would! No, something dreadful
has happened,--it's that horrid post-office!" and she wrung her hands.
Mamma was very sorry for Lizzie. Papa wrote to the postmaster, and
Ernestine's papa inquired at the Hingham post-office, and there was
quite a stir over the lost travellers.
Time went on. A month, six weeks, two months passed, and no tidings
came, and Mr. Adipose still sat in the lonely baby-house, watching the
cook brandishing a paper saucepan--always the same saucepan--over the
toy stove, and Bridget, the "housemaid," forever dusting the same
table-top, and never getting any farther on with her work. Mamma
proposed that Lizzie should make some new dolls to take the place of the
lost ones, and offered help and the use of her mucilage bottle; but
Lizzie shook her head sorrowfully.
"I can't help feeling as if the Allens may come back some day," she
said. "Colonel Wheeler is such a good traveller; and what would they
think if there was a strange family in their rooms? Besides, it's almost
as much fun to play without them, because there is Mr. Adipose, a
widower, you know, which is very interesting, and the two pairs of
twins, which Mrs. Allen forgot to take. Besides, I can always make
believe that they are coming to-morrow."
The very next morning after this conversation, as mamma sat writing in
her room upstairs, she heard a wild shriek at the front door. The
postman had rapped a moment before, and Lizzie had rushed down to meet
him, as she had each day since the dolls were lost. The shriek was so
loud and sudden that Mrs. Bruce jumped up; but before she could get to
the door in flew Lizzie, holding in her hand a wild huddle of battered
blue envelopes with "Dead Letter Office" stamped on their corners, and a
mass of pink and gray and green gowns and funny tumbled capes and hats.
It was the doll party, returned at last!
"Mamma, mamma," she cried, "what did I tell you? Colonel Wheeler didn't
run away with them; he has brought them all home."
There they were indeed; Mrs. Adipose as fat as ever, Mrs. Allen, and all
her children, the sister, the sister-in-law, and Colonel Wheeler, erect
and dignified as usual, in spite of a green crease across both his legs,
and a morsel of postage-stamp in his eye, and wearing an air of
conscious merit, which the occasion fully warranted. As Lizzie
rapturously embraced him, she cried: "Dear old Colonel, nobody believed
in you but me, not even mamma! I knew you hadn't run away with nineteen
people. Mamma laughed at me, but she doesn't know you as well as I do.
Nobody shall ever laugh at you again."
And nobody did. Colonel Wheeler had earned public confidence, and from
that day to this no one has dared to say a word against him in Lizzie's
hearing. He has made several journeys to Hingham without the least
misadventure, and papa says he would trust him to escort Lizzie herself
if it were necessary. He is the hero of the dolls' home, and poor old
Mr. Adipose, who never stirs from home, is made miserable by having him
held up as a perpetual model for imitation. But unlike the generality of
heroes, Colonel Wheeler lives up to his reputation, and is not less
modest, useful, and agreeable in the domestic circle because of being so
exceptionally meritorious!
NINETY-THREE AND NINETY-FOUR.
Ninety-three and Ninety-four were two houses standing side by side in
the outskirts of a country town, and to all outward appearance as like
each other as two peas. They were the pioneer buildings of a small brick
block; but as yet the rest of the block had not been built, which was
all the better for Ninety-three and Ninety-four, and gave them more
space and outlook. Both had French roofs with dormer windows; both front
doors "grained" to represent oak, the graining falling into a pattern of
regular stripes like a watered silk; and across the front of each, on
the ground floor, ran the same little sham balcony of varnished
iron,--balconies on which nothing heavier than a cat could venture
without risk of bringing the frail structures down into the street.
Inside, the houses differed in trifling respects, as houses must which
are under the control of differing minds; but in one point they were
precisely alike within,--which was, that the back room of the third
story of each was occupied by a girl of seventeen.
It is of these two rooms that I want to tell the story. So much has been
said and written of late years about home decoration and the methods of
producing it, that I think some other girls of seventeen with rooms to
make pretty may like to hear of how Eleanor Pyne and May Blodgett
managed theirs.
Eleanor was the girl at Ninety-three. She and May were intimate friends,
or considered themselves such. Intimacy is a word very freely used among
young people who have not learned what a sacred word it is and how very
much it means. They had grown up together, had gone to the same schools,
shared most of their pleasures as well as their lessons, sent each other
Christmas presents and birthday cards every year, and consulted in
advance over their clothes, spring bonnets, and fancy work, which, taken
all together, may be said to make an intimacy according to the general
use of the term. So it was natural that, when May, stirred by the sense
of young-ladyhood just at hand and by the modern impulse for house
decoration, desired to "do over" and beautify her room, Eleanor should
desire it also.
Making a room pretty nowadays would seem easy enough where there is
plenty of money for the purpose. There is only the embarrassment of
choice, though that is so embarrassing at times as to lead one to envy
those grandmothers of ours, who, with only three or four patterns of
everything to choose from, and those all ugly, had but the simple task
of selecting the least ugly! But in the case of my two girls there was
this further complication, that very little money could be used for
adornment of the bedrooms. Mrs. Blodgett and Mrs. Pyne had consulted
over the matter, and the decision was that Eleanor and May might each
spend twenty dollars, and no more.
What can be done with twenty dollars? It will buy one pretty article of
furniture. It will pay for a "Kensington Art Square," with perhaps
enough left for cheese-cloth curtains. It will paper a room, or paint
it. You can easily dispose of the whole of it, if you will, in a single
portière. And here were two rooms which needed renovation from floor to
ceiling!
The rooms were of the same size. Both had two windows looking north and
an ample closet. The most important difference lay in the fact that the
builder of the houses, for some reason known only to himself, had put a
small fireplace across the corner of Eleanor's room, and had put none in
May's. _Per contra_ May's room was papered, which she considered a
counterbalancing advantage; but as the paper was not very pretty,
Eleanor did not agree with her.
Many were the consultations held between the two girls. And just here,
before they had actually begun operations, a piece of good luck befell
both of them. Eleanor's grandmother presented her with an easy-chair, an
old one, very shabby as to cover, but a good chair still, and very
comfortable. And almost simultaneously a happily timed accident occurred
to Mrs. Blodgett's spare-room carpet, which made the buying of a new one
necessary, and the old one was given to May. It was a still respectable
Brussels, with rather a large medallion figure on a green ground. It did
not comport very well with the blue and drab paper on the walls, and the
medallions looked very big on the smaller floor; but May cared nothing
for that, and she accepted her windfall gleefully.
"It will save ever and ever so much," she said, joyously. "Carpets do
cost so. Poor Eleanor, you will have to get one for yourself, unless you
can persuade your cook to upset an oil lamp on one of your mother's."
"Oh, Annie is too careful; she could never be persuaded to do such a
thing as that," laughed Eleanor. "Besides, I don't want her to. I don't
like any of mother's carpets very much."
"Well, I don't care what sort of a carpet it is so long as I don't have
to buy it," said May.
"I do," replied Eleanor.
She did. There was this great point of difference between the friends.
Eleanor possessed by nature that eye for color and sense of effects
which belongs to what people call the "artistic" temperament. May had
none of this, and did not even understand what it meant. To her all reds
and olives and yellows were alike; differences of tone, inflections of
tint, were lost on her untrained and unappreciative vision. She was
unconscious of this deficiency, so it did not annoy her, and as Eleanor
had a quiet and pleasant way of differing with her, they never
quarrelled. But none the less did each hold to her own point of view and
her own opinion.
So, while May read eagerly all the articles in the secular and religious
papers which show how girls and women have made plain homes cheaply
charming by painting sunflowers and Black-Eyed Susans on ink-bottles and
molasses-jugs, converting pork-barrels into arm-chairs with the aid of
"excelsior" and burlaps, and "lighting up" dark corners with six-cent
fans, and was fired with an ambition to do the same, Eleanor silently
dissented from her enthusiasms. She was ready to help, however, even
when she did not agree; and May, glad of the help, did not notice much
the lack of sympathy. It is often so in friendships. One does the
talking and one the listening. One kisses while the other holds out the
cheek, as the French proverb puts it; one lays down the law and the
other differs without disputing it, so both are satisfied.
It was so in this case. Eleanor was doing a great deal of quiet thinking
and planning while May chattered by the hour over her projects.
"What I want my room to be," she told her friend, "is gay and dressy. I
hate dull-looking rooms, and having no carpet or paper to buy I can get
lots of chintz. There's a lovely pattern on the bargain counter at
Shell's for fourteen cents, all over roses. I am going to have a whole
piece of it, and just cover up all that awful old yellow furniture of
mine entirely. The bureau is to have little rods across the front and
curtains to hide the drawers, like that picture in the 'Pomologist,' and
I shall make a soapbox footstool and a barrel chair, and have
lambrequins and a drapery over my bed, and a coverlet and valances. The
washstand I have decided to do in burlaps with cat-tails embroidered on
the front, and a splasher with a pattern of swans and, 'Wash and be
clean.' Won't it be lovely?
"You know those black-walnut book-shelves of mine," she went on, after a
pause; "well, I am going to cover them in white muslin with little
pleated ruffles on the edges and pink satin bows at the corners. Sarah
Stanton has promised to paint me a stone bottle with roses to put on
top, and Bell Short is working me a wall banner. It's going to be the
gayest little place you ever saw."
"Won't the white muslin soil soon, and won't so much chintz get very
dusty?" objected Eleanor.
"Oh, they can be washed," replied May, easily.
So the big roll of chintz was ordered home, and for a fortnight she and
Eleanor spent all their spare time in hemming ruffles, tacking pleatings
on to wooden shelves, and putting up frills and curtains. When all was
done the room looked truly very fresh and gay. The old yellow "cottage
furniture" had vanished under its raiment of chintz and was quite
hidden. Even the foot-board of the bed had its slip-cover and flounce.
The books were ranged in rows on the muslin shelves with crisp little
ruffles above and below. Flowers and bright-colored zig-zags of crewels
adorned everything. Wherever it was possible, a Japanese fan was stuck
on the wall, or a bow of ribbon, or a little embroidered something, or a
Christmas card. Scarfs of one sort or another were looped across the
corners of the pictures, tidies innumerable adorned the chair-backs and
table-tops. There was a general look of fulness and of an irresistible
tendency in things to be of no particular use except to make spots of
meaningless color and keep the eye roving restlessly to and fro.
"Isn't it just lovely?" said May, as she stood in the doorway to take in
the effect. "Now, Eleanor Pyne, do say it's lovely."
"It's as bright as can be," answered Eleanor, cordially. "Only I can't
bear to think of all these pretty things getting dusty. They're so nice
and fresh now."
"Oh, they can easily be dusted," said May. "You are a perfect crank
about dust, Elly. Now, here is my account. I think I have managed pretty
well, don't you?"
The account ran thus:--
Sixty yards of chintz at 14 cents a yard $8.40
Burlaps, cheese-cloth, white muslin 3.25
Fans, ribbons, crewels 1.60
Stamping a tidy .30
One wicker-work chair 5.00
Hanging-basket 1.25
------
Total $19.80
"There's twenty cents left over," explained May, as she finished reading
the items. "That will just get a yellow ribbon to tie round the handle
of my clothes-brush. Eleanor, you've been ever so good to help me so
much. When are you going to begin your room? You must let me help you
now."
"I began this morning."
"Have you really begun? What did you get?"
"Oh, I didn't get anything. This first thing isn't to cost anything at
all."
"Why, what is it?"
"You know that ugly fire-board in front of my fireplace? I have taken it
upstairs to the attic, and mother has lent me some cunning little
andirons and a shovel and tongs which grandmamma gave her, and I am
going to have an open fire."
"But you don't need one. The room is warm enough, with your register."
"Oh, I know that. And I didn't mean that I was going to _light_ the
fire, only have it all ready for lighting. I rubbed the brass knobs
myself with Puit's Pomade, and they shine _beautifully_, and I painted
the bricks with red-ochre and water, and arranged the wood and
kindlings, and it has such a cosy, homelike look, you can't think!"
"Well, I confess I don't see the cosiness of a fire that you're never
going to light."
"Oh, mamma says if I ever am sick in bed, or there is any particular
reason for it, I may light it. And even if it doesn't happen often, I
shall have the comfort of knowing that it's all ready."
"I call it cold comfort. What a queer girl you are! Well, what are you
going to do next, Elly?"
"You will laugh when I tell you. I'm going to paper my room myself."
"Not really! Why, you can't. Papering is very difficult; I have always
heard so. People have to get men to do it, always."
"I don't believe it's so very difficult. There was a piece about it once
in the 'Family Friend' which I cut out and saved. It told how to make
the paste and everything, and it didn't seem hard at all. Mother thinks
I can. I'm going to begin to-morrow. In fact, I began yesterday, for old
Joyce came and mended the crack in the ceiling and kalsomined it, and
oh, May, I did such a _thrifty_ thing! He had a nice big brush and a
roller to smooth out the paper with, and don't you think, I made a
bargain with him to hire them out to me for three cents an hour, so I
sha'n't have to buy any."
"Didn't he laugh?"
"Yes, he laughed, and Ned laughed too; but I don't care. 'Let those
laugh who win,'" concluded Eleanor, with a bright, confident smile.
"Come in to-morrow afternoon and see how I get on," she called out from
the door of Ninety-three.
May went at the appointed time. The papering was done, and for a
beginner very well done, though an expert might easily have found faulty
places here and there. The paper Eleanor had chosen was of a soft, warm
yellow like pale sunshine, which seemed to neutralize the cold light of
the north windows. It looked plain when seen in shadow, but where the
light struck it revealed a pattern of graceful interlaced disks. And the
ceiling was tinted with a much lighter shade of the same yellow. A
chestnut picture-rod separated wall and ceiling.
"Putting the paper on myself saved _lots_," announced Eleanor,
gleefully. "It only cost fifteen cents a roll, so the whole room came to
exactly a dollar eighty. Then I am to pay Joyce eighteen cents for six
hours' use of his brush and roller, and mother isn't going to charge
anything for the flour for the paste, because I boiled it myself. I had
to get the picture-moulding, though, and that was rather dear,--nearly
two dollars. Ned nailed it up for me."
"Why didn't you have a paper border; it would not have cost nearly as
much?"
"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 apron 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 space 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 space 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."