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Page 50
"I do want to see to it all for myself. I've had the greatest difficulty
in waiting these four weeks, or should have had if I hadn't been so busy.
But now that I'm here I'll show you how to make a home out of four
chairs, three rugs, a table, a mirror, and an adorable copper bowl. Talk
of the simple life--you're going to see it lived just across the street,
you matrons with innumerable things to dust!"
"We shall be delighted to watch you do it," Ellen assured her, and Martha
gave an incredulous assent.
It was but a few hours before they saw the prophecy coming true. Miss
Ruston barely took time for luncheon, and by the time the dray containing
her modest supply of household goods was at her door she was ready for
work. A blue painter's blouse slipped over her travelling dress, her
sleeves rolled well up her shapely arms, she had plunged into the labour
of settling. She had for an assistant a woman whom Ellen had engaged for
her, and a tall youth who was the woman's son, and these two she managed
with a generalship little short of genius.
The floors had been cleaned and stained with a simple dull-brown stain a
week before, and Miss Ruston eyed them with satisfaction, uneven though
they were. She set the lad at work oiling them, demonstrating to him with
her own hands, carefully gloved, the way to do it. Every window she flung
wide, and Mrs. Kelsey was presently scrubbing away at the dim, small
panes, trying her best to make them shine to please the young lady who
from time to time stopped as she flew by to comment on her work.
"That's it, Mrs. Kelsey, you know how, don't you? I haven't much in the
way of hangings for them, so we must have them bright as mirrors. Hard to
get into the corners? Yes, I know. But it's somehow the corners that show
most. Try this hairpin under your cloth,"--she slipped one out from her
heavy locks--"you can get into the corners with that, I'm sure. Tom,
there's a spot as big as a plate you haven't hit. You can't see it in
that light; bend over this way a minute, and you'll find it. That's it!
It would have been a pity to leave it, wouldn't it! Don't miss any more
places, Tom. I haven't many rugs, and the floors will show a good deal."
"I didn't know artists were ever such practical people," confessed Mrs.
Red Pepper Burns, sitting on the edge of a straight-backed old chair in
the small kitchen. The house boasted but four rooms, two below and two
above, with a small enclosure off the kitchen which had been used for a
bedroom in the benighted days when people knew no better, and which
Charlotte had promptly set aside for a dark room.
"Practical? I'm not an artist, as you use the word, but I assure you real
artists are the most practical people in the world. Not one of them but
can make a whistle out of a pig's tail, or a queen's robe out of a sheet
and a blue scarf! What do you think of my light-housekeeping outfit?"
She held up an aluminum skillet which she had just taken from the box she
was unpacking. "Here's everything we can need in the way of cooking
utensils, packed into a foot square, and light as a feather, the whole
thing. My purse was rather light when I had bought it, too." She made a
funny little grimace, then laughed. "But my most trying purchase was my
tin bath! You can't imagine what a hunt I had for it. But I found it at
last in an Englishman's little out-of-the-way shop, and a big tin ewer to
go with it. I'm proud of them now, and emptying the tub once a day is
going to be fine for my muscles."
"You have splendid courage, dear, and I can see you're not afraid of hard
work. I want you to promise me this, though, Charlotte. When you are
specially tired, and there's luncheon or dinner to get, run over and let
us give you a trayful of things. Cynthia always cooks more than we eat,
and then has to contrive to use it in other ways."
Charlotte nodded. "Thank you. Luckily, though I'm poor I'm not proud. By
the way, you haven't an unused kitchen chair, have you? To tell the truth
I forgot several things, and one of them is a chair for the kitchen. I
probably shall not sit down myself, and shall always serve our little
meals in the living-room, but I foresee that I shall have guests here in
the kitchen, and I'd like to be able to offer them a chair. That one
you're sitting in is my very best old split-bottomed, high-backed
photographer's treasure, which must go in the front room by the
fireplace."
"When you are through explaining I will assure you that two kitchen
chairs will arrive as soon as I go home," promised Ellen.
"Bless you! I foresee that you will make a splendid neighbour. Do you
want to climb upstairs and see the nest I'm going to feather for Granny?"
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