“That’s all right. You’re a neighbor, and Jim wouldn’t mind doing a good turn. He’d make it as cheap as he could. It won’t cost nothing for him to look it over, anyhow. I’ll tell him when he comes back. My goodness! I smell that bread burning. Excuse me, I must go in.”
And the neighbor vanished, leaving Cornelia bewildered and a trifle upset and immediately certain that she ought not to allow the woman to send in her husband. Well, she would think it over and run in later to tell her it was impossible. That was clearly the only thing to do.
So she hurried back to put on the irons, for her curtains would soon be dry enough to iron, and she wanted to get them stenciled and up as soon as possible; the windows looked so bare and staring, especially up in Carey’s room.
Chapter 9
Carey came back and worked all the morning in the cellar at the foundation for his fireplace, occasionally coming up to measure and talk learnedly about drafts and the like. Cornelia was very happy seeing him at it, whether a fireplace ever resulted or not. It was enough that he was interested and eager over it. And while she was waiting for her irons to heat, she sat down and wrote a bright little letter to her mother, telling how Carey was helping her put the house in order, although she carefully refrained from mentioning a fireplace, for she was still dubious about whether it would be a success. But late in the afternoon, after the lunch was cleared away, the dinner well started, and the beautifully laundered curtains spread out on the dining room couch ready for decoration, Carey called her down to the cellar and proudly showed her a large, neat, square section of masonry arising from the cellar floor beneath the parlor to the height of almost her shoulders and having its foundation down at proper depth for safety so he told her.
“My! How you’ve worked, Carey! I think it’s wonderful you’ve accomplished so much in such a short time.”
“Aw! That’s nothing!” said Carey, exuding delight at her praise. “I coulda done more if I hadn’t had to go after the stuff. But say, Nell, I promised Pat I’d come around and help him with a big truck this afternoon, and I guess I better go now or I won’t get home in time for supper. Pat owes me five dollars anyhow, and I need it to pay for the stuff I bought this morning. I told the fella I’d bring it round this afternoon.”
Cornelia thought of her hoarded money and opened her lips to offer some of it then thought better of it. It would be good for Carey to take some of the responsibility and earn the money to beautify the house. He would be more interested in getting a job. So she smiled assent and told him to hurry and be sure to be back in time for supper, for she was going to have veal potpie, and it had to be eaten as soon as it was done or it would fall.
Carey went away whistling, and Cornelia sat down to her stenciling.
She had done a great deal of this work at college, often making quite a bit of money at it, so it was swift work, and soon she had a pair of curtains finished and pinned one up to the window to get the effect. She was just getting down from the stepladder when she heard a knock at the door, and wondering, she hurried to open it.
There stood a tall, bronzed man with a red face, very blue eyes, and a pleasant smile, and it suddenly came over her that this must be “Jim,” and she had forgotten to tell his wife not to send him over.
“My wife said you wanted me to come over and see about some work you wanted done,” he said, pulling off his cap and stepping in. “I thought I’d just run right in before dark, if you didn’t mind work clothes.”
“Oh, no,” said Cornelia, looking worried, “of course not. But really, I’m afraid I didn’t make it plain to your wife; I haven’t any idea of doing anything now—that is, I don’t suppose it would be possible—I haven’t any money and won’t have for a while.”
“That’s all right,” said the man, looking around the house alertly. “It don’t cost nothing to estimate. I just love to estimate. What was it you was calculating to do when you do build over?”
“Oh!” said Cornelia, abashed. “I don’t know that I had really thought it all out, but this house is so cramped and ugly I was just wishing I could take down this partition and throw the parlor and hall all into one. Do you think the ceiling would stand that? I suppose it’s a foolish idea, for I don’t know a thing about building, but this would really make a very pretty room if the hall wasn’t cut off this way.”
The man stepped into the doorway and looked up, eyeing the ceiling speculatively, with his mouth open.
“Why, yes, you could do that,” he drawled. “It’s a pretty long span, but you could do it. You’d have to use a coupla colyooms to brace her up, but that’s done—unless you used a I beam. That you could do.”
“An I beam! What’s an I beam?” asked Cornelia, interested.
“Why, it’s an iron beam running along underneath. You might be able to get her under out of sight, but most likely you’d have to have her below the ceiling. You could box her in, and you could make some more of ‘em and have a beamed ceiling if you want.”
“Oh, a beamed ceiling! But that would be expensive. How much does an I beam cost?”
“Oh, I should say a matter of fifteen or eighteen dollars fer one that long,” said the man, letting his eyes rove back and forth over the ceiling as if in search of a possible foot or two more of length concealed somewhere.
“Oh!” said Cornelia again wistfully. “And would it cost much to put it in?” She was trying to think just how much of that money was lying in her drawer upstairs.
“Well, not so much if I did it evenings. That would make a mighty nice room out of it, as you say. I’d be willing to let you have the stuff it took at cost, and I might be able to get a secondhand I beam. Come to think, there is one down to the shop a man ordered and then done ‘ithout. I might get it for you as low as five dollars if it would be long enough.”
He took out his foot rule and began to measure, and Cornelia drew her breath quickly. It seemed too good to be true! If she only could make over that room before her mother got home!
“What else was it you was calculatin’ to do?” the man asked, looking up suddenly from the paper on which he had set down the measurement. “I’ll look at that there I beam in the morning when I go down to the shop. I believe she’s long enough. Was there anything else?”
“Well, my brother is trying to build a stone fireplace over on that blank wall opposite, and I was wishing I had a window on each side; the room is so dark. But I guess we would have to wait for that, even if we did this. Windows are expensive, aren’t they?”
“Well, some; and then again they ain’t, if you get a secondhanded one. Sometimes people change their minds and have a different kind of winder after one’s made, and then it’s left on the boss’s hands, and he’s glad to get rid of it at cost. Got a lot of winders all sizes layin’ round over there. Get ‘em cheap, I guess. Say, you’d oughta have a coupla them di‘mon’-pane winders, just smallish ones, over there each side your chimney.”
He cast his eye around back to the hall and pointed uncertainly toward the long blank space of dull-brown, faded wallpaper.
“Then you need a bay there,” he said interestedly. “Say them bays now do make a pretty spot in a room. Got one where I was workin’ yesterday, just sets right outa the room ‘bout the height of a table, like a little room; has three winders to it, and the woman has cute little curtains to ‘em, and ferns and a birdcage. Say, that would make your room real pleasant-like.”
“It certainly would,” said Cornelia, her eyes shining, and a wistful sigh creeping to her lips. “But I guess it won’t be pos—”
“Say! You got some real nice curtains to your winders. I like them birds flying.”
Then he caught a glimpse of the table over which Cornelia had spread the curtain on which she was working. He saw the three birds already finished and the brush and paints and patterns lying there, and then he glanced back at her in astonishment.
“Say, you don’t mean to say you’re makin’ them birds on them curtains! My! Ain’t th
at interesting? How do you do it? Make one, and lemme see.”
Cornelia obligingly sat down and made two birds in flight while the carpenter watched every movement and exclaimed admiringly. It would not have been Cornelia if she had not imagined at that instant how her college friends would laugh if they could see her now, but she smiled to herself as she pleasantly showed him all the tricks of her small craft.
“Well,” he said as she finished the second bird, “now ain’t that great? I never supposed anyone could do a thing like that. I supposed it was done by machinery somehow. Say, I hope you won’t take no offense, but would you be willing to do something like that fer pay? Your saying you couldn’t afford them winders made me think of it. I’d like mighty well to get some curtains for my wife for all over the house, and if you could do some kind of a fancy pattern on ‘em—you and she could talk it over and fix that—I’d be willin’ to trade off your work fer mine. She’d tell her friends, too, and you could get other orders. I think it would pay.”
Cornelia’s cheeks grew rosy, but she held up her spirited little head and tried to be sensible about it. This wasn’t exactly what she had expected, of course, to get her first order from a common workingman, but then, what difference? It was a real order and would bring her and the family what they needed: more windows, more light, more room. Why not? And, if her dream of uplifting and beautifying homes had been a true ideal, why, here was her opportunity. Everybody began in a small way, and it really was wonderful to have opportunity, even so humble as this, open up right at the beginning. She caught her breath and tried to think. Of course everybody began everything in a small way at first.
“Well,” she said, hesitating, “I think perhaps I could. That is really my business, you know, interior decorating. I mean to do it on a large scale someday.”
“You don’t say!” said the man, looking at her admiringly. “I know women is getting into business a lot these days. But I ain’t never heard of that—what do you call it—interior decorating? You don’t mean wallpaper and painting? ’cause I could introduce you to my boss. He builds a lot of houses.”
“Well, yes,” said Cornelia, trying not to laugh. “My business is after the house is all built. I select wallpapers and curtains and tell them what furniture to get or how to arrange what furniture they have so it will look well in a room. I’ve been studying along those lines in college; it’s artistic work, you know.”
“I see!” said the man, looking at her with narrowing, speculative eyes. “Good idea, real good idea! Like to have someone arrange my house. Tell us what to buy. We’re laying out to get some new furniture, either a parlor suite or a dining room, though my wife’s got her heart set on a new bedroom outfit, and I don’t know which’ll come off first. Guess I’ll send her in to talk it over with you. I like them little birds real well. Where you goin’ to put ‘em? Here?” He looked at the two long front windows.
“No, these are going up on the third floor in my brother’s room, the front room. I’m going to make that all blue and white, and these bluebirds will make it look cheerful.”
“H’m! I guess when Nannie sees ‘em she’ll be strong fer the bedroom set and let the other rooms go a spell till we can afford it.”
“Why not paint your old bedroom set and have it decorated like your curtains and save the money for some good furniture downstairs? They are using painted furniture a lot now for bedrooms.”
He stared at her eagerly.
“There, now, see? I told you you were going to be real useful to me. You’ve saved me the price of a bedroom set a’ready. It’s a bargain. You do the decorating, and I’ll do the carpentering. I’ll see about them winders and let you know tomorrow afternoon.”
When he had gone, Cornelia stood in the middle of her dreary little parlor and looked around with startled eyes. Here she had contracted to have windows put in and the partition taken down and promised to go into business herself right away. What would her father say to it all?
But she could see Harry and Louise coming down the street, and she hurried into the kitchen to prepare the dessert for dinner, for it was getting late for what she had planned.
The children came bursting into the kitchen, eager to see how much Carey had accomplished, and clattered down to the cellar and up again, their hands full of cookies their sister had baked, their eyes happy; and somehow home and life looked good to Cornelia. This was the great day at college when the play on which she had spent so much time and thought was to come off, and she had expected to have a hard time bearing the thought of all that was going on and she not in it; but she never once thought of it all day until just as her head was touching the pillow that night, and then she was so sleepy that it only came as a floating thought of some far-off period of her existence in which she now had no part. She was wholly and entirely interested just now in her home and what she was going to do for the neighborhood. She had not told her father yet about the carpenter and his propositions. She wanted to have something more definite to tell, perhaps to surprise her family with, if possible, so she had merely asked him casually if he objected to her making little inexpensive changes in the house, things that she could manage herself, and he had joyously told her to do what she liked and pull the walls down if she wanted to, only so she got things fixed to please her.
Chapter 10
Cornelia awoke with a great zeal for the work upon her. She had dreamed of a living room that would lift the whole house out of the sordid neighborhood and make it a place of delight. She had thought out some built-in seats with lockers where many of the odds and ends could be stowed; she had planned to paint the old, cheap dining room furniture a wonderful deep-cream enamel and decorate it like some of the expensive sets in the stores; so would she treat the old bedroom sets that were not of real wood. The set in Carey’s room was old walnut and valuable. A little oil would bring it back to its rich-brown beauty. The set in her mother’s room was a cheap one; and that she would paint gray with decorations of little pink buds and trailing vines. The set in her own room should be ivory-white with sepia shadows. She would go somewhere and learn how to put on wallpaper, or find a man who would do it very cheaply, and little by little the old house should be made over. Cheap felt-paper of pale gray or pearl or cream for the bedrooms, and corn-color for the living room. She wasn’t sure what she would do with the dining room yet till she had the furniture painted, perhaps paint the walls white and tack little moldings in patterns around for panels outlined in green. Green! That was the color for the dining room, with a fern dish for the center of the table and a grass rug under the table. White curtains with green stenciling! That was it! And Carey’s room should be painted white, walls and ceiling and all. She would set him at it as soon as he finished the fireplace, and then she would stencil little birds, or a more conventional pattern, around the top of the walls for a border, in the same blue as the curtains. That would be a room to which he could bring home his friends. A picture or two, well chosen—she had the Lone Wolf in her trunk done in steel-blues, the very thing for one—and an unbleached muslin bedspread and pillow and roll also stenciled in blue. That would make a beautiful room. Then the bathroom, of course, must be all white, heavy white enamel. She saw where her money would go now, in pots of paint and brushes, and the work would take days, weeks, but it would be beautiful. She could see her dream before her and was happy.
She went downstairs and found the fire out. That made delay. It was her own fault, of course; she had forgotten to look after it the last thing at night, and also everybody else had forgotten. Her father had gone to bed early with a headache. He usually looked after the fire. Carey ought to have thought of it, but Carey never thought of anything but himself and his own immediate plans unless his interest was held. Cornelia found on looking for it in her haste that her stock of patience had run low, and added to this she had a stiff shoulder from washing windows, and Harry had a bad toothache and had to hurry away to the dentist’s. Carey didn’t get up at all when he wa
s called, and Louise and Cornelia had a rough time of it making some coffee for their father over the gas flame. There was no time to wait for the fire, for Father must catch his car at the regular time, whether he had breakfast or not. When Louise had gone off to school, and Harry, returning smelling of cloves and creosote, had also been fed and comforted and sent off with an excuse to his teacher, Cornelia wanted to sit down and cry. Suddenly the whole thing seemed a house of cards. The sordid neighborhood became more sordid than ever, the house too dingy and hopeless for words, all her plans tawdry and cheap and useless. Why try, when the result to be attained at best would be but a makeshift of poverty?
To add to her misery, the morning mail brought letters of condolence from her classmates because she could not be with them at the play, and bits of news about how this and that were going wrong because she wasn’t there, and who was trying to take her place and bungling things.
Suddenly Cornelia put her head down on the dining room table in the midst of the breakfast clutter and cried. She felt sorrier and sorrier for herself. Carey upstairs, great, big, lazy fellow, sleeping and letting her make the fire and do the work and carry the burden. He ought to be out hunting a job and helping to fill the family purse. He ought to be up and at his fireplace. She felt like going up and shaking him and telling him just how despicable he was. And she wished she could shut up the house and go off all day somewhere and have a good time. She was tired, and she loathed the thought of washing windows and scouring the floor and getting meals. Even stenciling curtains had lost its charm.
She became ashamed of herself presently, remembering her mother and how many years she had done all these things and more. She dried her eyes and began to clear off the table. She had barely finished when she had a visitation from the woman next door, who came beaming in to see the curtains her husband had told her about and to ask whether Cornelia minded her having bluebirds on some of her curtains if she put them on the other side of the house. Somehow the woman’s eagerness to have her home made over into an artistic one melted away some of Cornelia’s gloom, and she was able to rise to the occasion and talk with her neighbor almost as enthusiastically as if she had been really interested. Perhaps she was interested; she wasn’t sure. Anyway, it was going to be fun to get rid of ugly things in that woman’s house and substitute simple, pretty ones. When Mrs. Barkley got up to go, Cornelia thought she heard faint movements up in the third story and took heart. When she opened the door to let her neighbor out, promising to run in sometime within a day or two and look over the rooms, the sun shot out from behind a grim cloud and flooded the damp street with glory, and Cornelia began to feel better.