CHAPTER IX
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 draughts, 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 to rights, 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 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 its 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 forsupper. 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 stencilling.
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 step-ladder 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 yourwife 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, eying the ceiling speculatively, with his mouth open.
“Why, yes, youcoulddo 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—without you used a I beam. That you could do.”
“An eye beam! What’s an eye 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 eye beam cost?”
“Oh, I should say a matter of fifteen or eighteen dollars fer one that long,” said the man, letting his eye 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 second-handed 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 guesswe 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 second-handed 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 oughtta 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 wall-paper.
“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 bird-cage. 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 andpaints and patterns lying there; and then he glanced back at her in astonishment.
“Say, you don’t mean to say you’remakin’them birds on them curtains! My! Ain’t that interesting? How do you do it? Make one, and le’me 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 visioned at that instant how her college-mates 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 any one could do a thing like that. I supposed it was done by machinery somehow. Say, I hope you won’t take no offence, 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 working man, but then, what difference? It was a real order and would bring her and thefamily 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 some day.”
“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 wall-paper 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 wall-papers 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 some one arrange my house. Tell us what to buy. We’re laying out to get some new furnitoor, either a parlor soot or a dining-room, though my wife’s got her heart set on a new bedroom outfit, and I don’t know which’llcome 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 blue birds 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 at once. 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 dessertfor dinner; for it was getting late for what she had planned.
She must put the new ideas out of her mind and get back to her work, or dinner would be late.
The children came bursting into the kitchen, eager to see how much Carey had accomplished, and clattered down 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 that 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, pull the walls down if she wanted to, only so she got things fixed to please her.