[234]CHAPTER XXIITHE WRITING-ROOMItvery early became necessary that Phyl and Dolly should have some sort of a room in which to write quite to themselves.A sudden gust of wind in the house would bring scraps of papers floating from everywhere, and if any one had troubled to pick them up and read them, the eye would be sure to be met with some such choice literary morsel as, “With a smothered oath, the Earl flung away his half-smoked Havana, and ground his heel into the gravel;” or, “She drew her willowy figure up proudly, and gave him a look of scorn from her starry violet eyes.”And when, on Dolly leaving school, the two girls, lost without the school paper, resolved to bring out a girls’ magazine, a secluded room for editorial purposes was more than ever necessary.Mary, coming in to lay the lunch-cloth, would be met by an agonized entreaty from the editors for just ten more minutes, and the big table was always so[235]littered up with stacks of paper, that Mary, impressed by the business-like look, generally yielded, and lunch was in consequence frequently half-an-hour late.Or an early afternoon visitor would be shown into the drawing-room just in time to see a girl rise up from the floor with startled eyes, hastily gather up the papers from the sofa-table, and beat a hurried retreat.Sometimes the two wrote in their bedrooms.Phyl had a tiny room to herself, but Dolly and Weenie slept together. Phyl had an old writing-table against one wall, and just the other side of the partition stood Dolly’s wash-stand.And no one knew how often Phyl had to spring up from her work, and with wrathful eyes seek the neighbouring apartment, to request Dolly to “stop that wretched tapping,” for Dolly had a vexatious habit, in moments when words failed her, of sitting with dreamy eyes in front of her wash-stand and tap, tapping at the wall with her idle pen.And no one knew how often Dolly had to get up and move her chair to allow Weenie to pass into the room. It was a small room, and the furniture almost filled it; when the young editor was seated on her chair there was not one inch of space for any one to pass to one part of the room, for the big bed reached just to the chair.Dolly used to groan when she heard Weenie coming.[236]“Look here, Weenie, this is the fifth time this morning,” she would say, exasperated, “you can’t come past me again.”“Oh, can’t I?” Weenie would retort; “I want something out of my drawer, and I’m going to have it.”“Well, climb over the bed,” Dolly would entreat, “I’m insuchan important place.”If Weenie were in a mild mood she would comply, and scramble across the bed to her set of drawers. But as a rule the sight of Dolly’s flushed cheeks and bent head used to act as an irritant upon her, and she would insist upon a passage being made for her.“This is my room as much as yours,” she would say, “it’s not right for any one to block it up. I never do.”“But there’s nowhere else to sit,” poor Dolly would say.“Write your silly things on the dressing-table, then,” Miss Weenie would suggest.Dolly could not explain to her how it was growing impossible for her to write well anywhere except on that ancient wash-stand.“I’ve let you go past four times,” she would say, “and I willnotmove again. I believe you come up just on purpose. What do you want out of your drawer now?”“Never you mind. Are you going to get up?”“No, I amnot,” and Dolly would sit hard on her chair and put her feet against the wall to brace[237]herself. And Weenie would push and struggle to get past, and try to tilt the chair.And sometimes Dolly won and wrote on victorious, while Weenie climbed the bed.And sometimes Weenie won, and Dolly was jammed helplessly up against her table, and a heroine had to wait in the middle of an impassioned speech, while Weenie leisurely extricated a pair of gloves, or a catapult, or a box of chocolates from the drawer.Clif and Ted at last took pity on the literary pair, and, as a joint Christmas present, built them a little wooden room at the end of the verandah.The girls were delighted, and indeed all the house took interest in seeing them establish themselves in the tiny place when the carpenters pronounced the long-awaited word, “Finished.”They set to work and papered the walls themselves, and even Ted, who at first had been quite annoyed at the idea of his carpentering being covered up, was forced to admit that the aesthetic covering of green marguerites was an improvement. True, Richie, who had too fine an eye, pointed out the vexatious facts that some of the widths had the flowers upside down, that there were blisters and bubbles in places, that one or two pieces showed a tendency to curl away from the wall, but no one else was hypercritical. The room was about seven feet square, so there was space for no furniture beyond a little table and a chair each. The chairs stood back to back, touching each other, so[238]that if one writer in the throes of an idea that would not reduce itself to words, moved restlessly, the other was forced to protest. On the walls, hanging book-shelves held every volume the girls possessed; and like most of the shelves that depend from a cord, these had an irritating knack of occasionally tilting forward, or sloping sideways, and showering their contents on the owners’ heads. Photographs, little pictures, and nick-nacks filled every available corner; under each table was a little waste-paper basket; on each table a tiny ink-bottle and fancy pen—Richie’s gifts—a vase of flowers, sixpenny statuettes of Milton and Shakespeare, a photograph or two, a penwiper, a stamp-sponge, a doll’s saucer filled with paper fasteners.“Now wecanwrite,” said the girls, and they set out neat little stacks of paper, and dipped their new gilt pens into the new ink, and held their elbows well to their sides as they wrote, lest they should disturb any of the pretty decorations on their tables.There was a window in the room, a tiny affair that remained from an old greenhouse, and while the room was new the family used to be always going along the verandah on tip-toe and peeping at the would-be authoresses.But Ted came into the dining-room one evening when the room was a couple of months old. “Look here,” he said, “I don’t believe those little monkeys[239]do a thing but talk and fix up the pictures and things in there. A lot of good it is to them.”“Dolly was writing down in the orchard to-day,” volunteered Freddie.“Phyl’s scribbling in her bedroom now,” Richie said.Clif and Ted went up-stairs two steps at a time to see, and there was Phyl writing by a candle in her room, and Dolly, her washing-stand in a glorious muddle, her arms spread out, covering paper at a surprising pace in hers.“Well, you’re nice ones,” said the discomfited carpenters. “Why aren’t you in your study?”The girls looked very much ashamed of themselves.“I was only just finishing something in a hurry,” Dolly said.Phyl gathered her papers together, and picked up her candle.“I’m just going down,” she said guiltily.But Freddie reported them again next day.“That Dolly was writing in the garden again on her knee,” he said, “and Phyl hasn’t been in the room all day.”Again the carpenters demanded the reason, and again the girls made lame excuses, and hastened away to sit there forthwith.But gradually the dapper little study fell into disuse, except when the makers were about, when the[240]girls, afraid of hurting feelings, and being told that they did not know their own minds, used to make a point of going and sitting there.“It’s because you bump my chair so, Dolly,” Phyl said irritably, one evening when they had been fairly driven into the place by the indignant carpenters. “I’m sure I could write here if you would only sit still.”Dolly sighed. “If only I could spread my arms out,” she said, “I’d give anything to have a great big table to write on.”“I believe it’s the walls,” Phyl said in a whisper; “don’t they seem to press down on you when they’re so near?”Richie poked his head in the door at this point, and looked searchingly and suspiciously at each girl’s table.“Thought so,” he said offendedly, “using your dirty old ink-bottles, both of you, and red pens. Just wait till I give you Christmas-boxes again! Don’t believe you ever use the ones I gave you.”“I forgot to fill mine,” Phyl said.“My nib wanted changing,” said Dolly; “I’ll use yours again to-morrow, Richie.” But she sighed; itwassuch comfort to use a plain pen, and have a great fat bottle of ink to dip into.Ted came and looked at them gloomily. “Freddie says you’re always writing in the orchard, Dolly,” he said; “what’s the good of a study to you? I’ll make an aviary of it for the Mater.”[241]“I’m getting so that I can only write out of doors,” Dolly said.“Well, why doesn’t Phyl stay in?” Ted demanded.Phyl cast about for an excuse; then she told one of the truths.“It—it’s really a bit draughty, Ted, these windy days,” she said apologetically. And indeed she owed several colds to the winds that whistled beneath and round the ill-fitting door and the window.“You could easily hang something over them,” said Ted, “you’re so fond of draping everything.”“And—and it really has a musty smell sometimes,” Phyl added, driven to bay. “See—there’s blue mould coming in patches everywhere on the walls from the last rains, our books are getting quite spoiled.”Ted sniffed and peered about. “I don’t notice anything,” he said; “but of course there’s no accounting for finicky girls like you.”“If they burnt coffee in the room they wouldn’t notice it,” Richie said; “that’s what old Adams always does after our chemistry.”“Oh, go away,” said Phyl, exasperated, “we’re frightfully busy; everything has to be with the printer to-morrow, and there are Answers to Correspondents, and Fashions, and an editorial, and some poems to do yet.”Richie and Ted melted away after a little more carping, and the harassed editors fell to work again.
Itvery early became necessary that Phyl and Dolly should have some sort of a room in which to write quite to themselves.
A sudden gust of wind in the house would bring scraps of papers floating from everywhere, and if any one had troubled to pick them up and read them, the eye would be sure to be met with some such choice literary morsel as, “With a smothered oath, the Earl flung away his half-smoked Havana, and ground his heel into the gravel;” or, “She drew her willowy figure up proudly, and gave him a look of scorn from her starry violet eyes.”
And when, on Dolly leaving school, the two girls, lost without the school paper, resolved to bring out a girls’ magazine, a secluded room for editorial purposes was more than ever necessary.
Mary, coming in to lay the lunch-cloth, would be met by an agonized entreaty from the editors for just ten more minutes, and the big table was always so[235]littered up with stacks of paper, that Mary, impressed by the business-like look, generally yielded, and lunch was in consequence frequently half-an-hour late.
Or an early afternoon visitor would be shown into the drawing-room just in time to see a girl rise up from the floor with startled eyes, hastily gather up the papers from the sofa-table, and beat a hurried retreat.
Sometimes the two wrote in their bedrooms.
Phyl had a tiny room to herself, but Dolly and Weenie slept together. Phyl had an old writing-table against one wall, and just the other side of the partition stood Dolly’s wash-stand.
And no one knew how often Phyl had to spring up from her work, and with wrathful eyes seek the neighbouring apartment, to request Dolly to “stop that wretched tapping,” for Dolly had a vexatious habit, in moments when words failed her, of sitting with dreamy eyes in front of her wash-stand and tap, tapping at the wall with her idle pen.
And no one knew how often Dolly had to get up and move her chair to allow Weenie to pass into the room. It was a small room, and the furniture almost filled it; when the young editor was seated on her chair there was not one inch of space for any one to pass to one part of the room, for the big bed reached just to the chair.
Dolly used to groan when she heard Weenie coming.
[236]“Look here, Weenie, this is the fifth time this morning,” she would say, exasperated, “you can’t come past me again.”
“Oh, can’t I?” Weenie would retort; “I want something out of my drawer, and I’m going to have it.”
“Well, climb over the bed,” Dolly would entreat, “I’m insuchan important place.”
If Weenie were in a mild mood she would comply, and scramble across the bed to her set of drawers. But as a rule the sight of Dolly’s flushed cheeks and bent head used to act as an irritant upon her, and she would insist upon a passage being made for her.
“This is my room as much as yours,” she would say, “it’s not right for any one to block it up. I never do.”
“But there’s nowhere else to sit,” poor Dolly would say.
“Write your silly things on the dressing-table, then,” Miss Weenie would suggest.
Dolly could not explain to her how it was growing impossible for her to write well anywhere except on that ancient wash-stand.
“I’ve let you go past four times,” she would say, “and I willnotmove again. I believe you come up just on purpose. What do you want out of your drawer now?”
“Never you mind. Are you going to get up?”
“No, I amnot,” and Dolly would sit hard on her chair and put her feet against the wall to brace[237]herself. And Weenie would push and struggle to get past, and try to tilt the chair.
And sometimes Dolly won and wrote on victorious, while Weenie climbed the bed.
And sometimes Weenie won, and Dolly was jammed helplessly up against her table, and a heroine had to wait in the middle of an impassioned speech, while Weenie leisurely extricated a pair of gloves, or a catapult, or a box of chocolates from the drawer.
Clif and Ted at last took pity on the literary pair, and, as a joint Christmas present, built them a little wooden room at the end of the verandah.
The girls were delighted, and indeed all the house took interest in seeing them establish themselves in the tiny place when the carpenters pronounced the long-awaited word, “Finished.”
They set to work and papered the walls themselves, and even Ted, who at first had been quite annoyed at the idea of his carpentering being covered up, was forced to admit that the aesthetic covering of green marguerites was an improvement. True, Richie, who had too fine an eye, pointed out the vexatious facts that some of the widths had the flowers upside down, that there were blisters and bubbles in places, that one or two pieces showed a tendency to curl away from the wall, but no one else was hypercritical. The room was about seven feet square, so there was space for no furniture beyond a little table and a chair each. The chairs stood back to back, touching each other, so[238]that if one writer in the throes of an idea that would not reduce itself to words, moved restlessly, the other was forced to protest. On the walls, hanging book-shelves held every volume the girls possessed; and like most of the shelves that depend from a cord, these had an irritating knack of occasionally tilting forward, or sloping sideways, and showering their contents on the owners’ heads. Photographs, little pictures, and nick-nacks filled every available corner; under each table was a little waste-paper basket; on each table a tiny ink-bottle and fancy pen—Richie’s gifts—a vase of flowers, sixpenny statuettes of Milton and Shakespeare, a photograph or two, a penwiper, a stamp-sponge, a doll’s saucer filled with paper fasteners.
“Now wecanwrite,” said the girls, and they set out neat little stacks of paper, and dipped their new gilt pens into the new ink, and held their elbows well to their sides as they wrote, lest they should disturb any of the pretty decorations on their tables.
There was a window in the room, a tiny affair that remained from an old greenhouse, and while the room was new the family used to be always going along the verandah on tip-toe and peeping at the would-be authoresses.
But Ted came into the dining-room one evening when the room was a couple of months old. “Look here,” he said, “I don’t believe those little monkeys[239]do a thing but talk and fix up the pictures and things in there. A lot of good it is to them.”
“Dolly was writing down in the orchard to-day,” volunteered Freddie.
“Phyl’s scribbling in her bedroom now,” Richie said.
Clif and Ted went up-stairs two steps at a time to see, and there was Phyl writing by a candle in her room, and Dolly, her washing-stand in a glorious muddle, her arms spread out, covering paper at a surprising pace in hers.
“Well, you’re nice ones,” said the discomfited carpenters. “Why aren’t you in your study?”
The girls looked very much ashamed of themselves.
“I was only just finishing something in a hurry,” Dolly said.
Phyl gathered her papers together, and picked up her candle.
“I’m just going down,” she said guiltily.
But Freddie reported them again next day.
“That Dolly was writing in the garden again on her knee,” he said, “and Phyl hasn’t been in the room all day.”
Again the carpenters demanded the reason, and again the girls made lame excuses, and hastened away to sit there forthwith.
But gradually the dapper little study fell into disuse, except when the makers were about, when the[240]girls, afraid of hurting feelings, and being told that they did not know their own minds, used to make a point of going and sitting there.
“It’s because you bump my chair so, Dolly,” Phyl said irritably, one evening when they had been fairly driven into the place by the indignant carpenters. “I’m sure I could write here if you would only sit still.”
Dolly sighed. “If only I could spread my arms out,” she said, “I’d give anything to have a great big table to write on.”
“I believe it’s the walls,” Phyl said in a whisper; “don’t they seem to press down on you when they’re so near?”
Richie poked his head in the door at this point, and looked searchingly and suspiciously at each girl’s table.
“Thought so,” he said offendedly, “using your dirty old ink-bottles, both of you, and red pens. Just wait till I give you Christmas-boxes again! Don’t believe you ever use the ones I gave you.”
“I forgot to fill mine,” Phyl said.
“My nib wanted changing,” said Dolly; “I’ll use yours again to-morrow, Richie.” But she sighed; itwassuch comfort to use a plain pen, and have a great fat bottle of ink to dip into.
Ted came and looked at them gloomily. “Freddie says you’re always writing in the orchard, Dolly,” he said; “what’s the good of a study to you? I’ll make an aviary of it for the Mater.”
[241]“I’m getting so that I can only write out of doors,” Dolly said.
“Well, why doesn’t Phyl stay in?” Ted demanded.
Phyl cast about for an excuse; then she told one of the truths.
“It—it’s really a bit draughty, Ted, these windy days,” she said apologetically. And indeed she owed several colds to the winds that whistled beneath and round the ill-fitting door and the window.
“You could easily hang something over them,” said Ted, “you’re so fond of draping everything.”
“And—and it really has a musty smell sometimes,” Phyl added, driven to bay. “See—there’s blue mould coming in patches everywhere on the walls from the last rains, our books are getting quite spoiled.”
Ted sniffed and peered about. “I don’t notice anything,” he said; “but of course there’s no accounting for finicky girls like you.”
“If they burnt coffee in the room they wouldn’t notice it,” Richie said; “that’s what old Adams always does after our chemistry.”
“Oh, go away,” said Phyl, exasperated, “we’re frightfully busy; everything has to be with the printer to-morrow, and there are Answers to Correspondents, and Fashions, and an editorial, and some poems to do yet.”
Richie and Ted melted away after a little more carping, and the harassed editors fell to work again.