CHAPTER VI
FURNITURE MAKING
It did not take the women long to adjust themselves to life at Rose House, and as for the children, they loved it from the first. It was a great international gathering that was sheltered on the old farm. Mrs. Schuler was German; Moya, Irish. Mrs. Peterson, a Swede, occupied the rooster room with her baby and her flaxen-haired daughter of three; Mrs. Paterno, an Italian, found good pasturage among the cows of the violet room for her black-eyed boys of two and four; Mrs. Tsanoff, a Bulgarian, told the Matron that her twin girl babies were too young to pay attention to the kittens on the curtains of the yellow room; while Mrs. Vereshchagin, a Russian, discovered that the puppies of the blue room were a great help to her in holding the attention of her boys of three and five when she was putting them to bed.
Mrs. Schuler shook her head doubtfully when she took down their names and nationalities in her notebook on the day of their arrival.
"If we get through the summer without quarrels over the war it will be a miracle!" she exclaimed to her husband.
But she found that the poor creatures were too weary, too sad, too physically crushed to have spirit enough left to fight any battles, even those of words. With almost every one of them there had been a tragedy such as often comes to the immigrants who reach the United States equipped for success only with strong muscles--a tragedy of wasted hope and broken courage and failing vigor if not of death. Mrs. Paterno was the only one of them who could sympathize with Moya's widowhood; her husband had seen the Black Hand death sign a few months before, had disregarded it and had been stabbed in the back one night as he came home from his work.
Conversation was not carried on fluently among them. They met on the common ground of English, but not one of them could speak it well, each one translated phrases of her own tongue quite literally, and the meaning of the whole talk was largely a matter of guesswork. What they did understand was nature's language of motherhood. They were content to sit for hours on the veranda or in the grove or behind the house, preparing vegetables for Moya, chattering about their babies and explaining their meaning by gestures that seemed to be perfectly understood.
The women had daily duties to perform according to a schedule worked out by Mrs. Schuler, who apportioned to each a share of the general work of the house in addition to the care of her own room and the washing for herself and her children. With so many fingers flying the tasks were soon done, and then they sat on the porch or in the grove among the sweet-smelling pines, or walked in the pasture or up and down the lane leading to the main road. Once in a while they went to Rosemont, but for the most part they were too languid to care to walk far and too glad of the change and the rest and quiet to want to weary themselves unnecessarily.
The boys had built a platform across the back of the house, and it was here that they did their carpentry, an awning sheltering them from the sun or rain. A cupboard at one end held their tools, and their partly finished articles were neatly stacked in a corner. As they got out their tools now James made a confession.
"To tell you the honest, unvarnished truth, I'm tired of making chairs. It seems as if we'd never have enough."
"It takes an awful lot to furnish a house," commented Roger wisely, "and you know we had very few given us so if we want enough we have to make them."
"We've got all the chairs you've done upholstered all they're going to be," said Ethel Brown. "Why can't Ethel Blue and I each make a high chair?"
"No reason at all," agreed Roger quickly. "You've watched James and me and seen our really superior workmanship; imitate it, my child!"
The girls were already turning over the boys' supply of boxes to select those suitable for the chairs for the children. They took four that had held lemons or other fruit and were tall and narrow when stood on end. The boards they were made of were very light but quite solid enough to hold the weight of a small child. To make it firm upon the ground, however, they sawed a piece of heavy plank a little larger than the end upon which the box was to stand and nailed it on from the inside.
When the high chair was done the boys complimented their co-workers on the success of their first experiment.
"I hardly could have done it better myself," said Roger grandly.
All the high chairs were covered with blue and white cretonne to match the blue and white of the dining room and the girls set to work to tack on the outside covering and to cut out the covers of the small cushions that were to make the seat and back comfortable. The cushions themselves they had made from ticking filled with excelsior when they had calculated the number of high chairs they must have.
The boys, meanwhile were constructing two chairs of quite different build. One was a heavy chair for the hall or the veranda, its original condition being a packing box a foot and a half deep, about twenty inches wide and three or four feet long. This also was set on end, and the other end and the cover were laid aside to be used in making the seat and in shutting in the openings below the seat.
"How are you going to fasten that seat so it won't let the sitter down on the floor?" inquired Ethel Blue, as James explained what he was going to do.
"Do you see these cleats, ma'am? These are each a foot long. I nail one of these standing up straight at each edge of the sides and the back--six of them altogether. Then I lay three other cleats across their tops--thusly."
"O, you've made a sort of framework that will support the seat! I get that!" exclaimed Ethel Blue.
"All you have to do now is to nail your seat boards on to those horizontal cleats and it's as firm as firm can be."
"Aren't you going to do something with those sides--those arms, or whatever you call them?" inquired Ethel Brown. "They seem sharp and uncomfortable and in the way to me."
Both boys studied the chair seriously before answering. Then they took a pencil and paper and consulted.
"I should think it would look pretty well to cut out a right angle on each aide," suggested James. "That would leave a sort of wing effect like a hall porter's chair, only not so high, and at the same time it would make an arm to rest your elbow on. How does that strike you ?"
Roger nodded. "It hits me all right. I was thinking of a curve instead of a right angle, but the right angle will be easier to make. Go ahead."
So the right angle was decided on and James proceeded to cut it.
Roger, meanwhile, had been sorting out the wood he needed for a chair of another pattern.
"I wish Dorothy would heave in sight," he growled as he piled some half inch thick strips in one heap. "She told me she'd tell me all she knew about chair legs when I reached this stage of proceedings."
"She will," answered a cheerful voice, and gray-eyed Dorothy appeared from the house. "I felt in my bones that you'd be beginning this lot this afternoon, so I ambled over to see if I could help in any way."
"Keep right on ambling till you reach this end of the platform and tell me whether you said that chair legs could be made of this stripping or whether I'll have to get solid pieces, square-ended, you know, joist or scantling or whatever it's called."
"Strips will do, only you'll have to use two for each leg. Nail them together at right angles. It will make a two-sided leg, but it will be plenty strong enough, though perhaps not truly handsome."
"If handsomeness means solidity--no. Still, they'll do. Can you give me the lengths for these strips?" and Roger waved his saw at his cousin as if he were so impatient to begin that he could not wait to study out the lengths for himself.
"For the one I made for the attic," replied his cousin, "I cut four strips each two inches wide and twenty-one inches long for the front legs and four strips each two inches wide and twenty-five inches long for the back legs. Then there were two two-inch strips seventeen inches long to go under the seat to strengthen it front and back, and two two-inch strips each thirteen inches long to go under the seat and strengthen it on the sides. That's all the stock you need except the box."
"I suppose you've got a particular box in mind to fit those sizes."
"Those sizes fit the box, rather. Yes, I got a grocery box that was about eighteen inches long and thirteen wide and eleven deep. I saw one here just like it before I gave you those measurements, so you can go ahead sawing while I pull off one side of the box--the cover has gone already but we don't need it."
Quiet reigned for a few minutes while they all worked briskly.
"Now I'm ready to put this superb article together," announced Roger. "How high from the ground does the seat go?"
"Nail your cleats across with their top edges fifteen inches from the ground and nail the bottom of the box on to the cleats. See how these two-sided legs protect the edges of the box as well as make it decent looking?"
"So they do," admitted Roger. "They aren't so bad after all."
"I think those sides are going to be too high," decided Dorothy after examining the chair carefully and sitting down in it. "Don't you think it pushes your elbows up too high?"
Roger tried it and thought it did.
"Suppose you saw those sides down about five inches."
Roger obeyed and Dorothy tried the chair again and pronounced it much improved.
"It's comfy enough now, but these arms don't look very well, and they'd be liable to tear your sleeves," she said. "Let's put on some strip covers. They'll give a finish to the whole thing, and hide the end of the two-sided legs and be smooth."
"Plenty of reason for having them. How many inches?"
"Twelve," answered Dorothy after measuring. "The top of the back needs a strip cover, too. Cut another nineteen inches long. There, I think that's not such a bad looking chair!'"
"Do you want cushions for those chairs?" inquired Ethel Brown, appearing at the door with a piece of cretonne in her hand. "We've got material enough for at least seat cushions for both of them."
"They'll be lots more comfy," admitted James, "if the excelsior crop is still holding out."
"It is. I'll make them right off, and Ethel Blue can help you out there."
She retired from view and sent out her cousin, and until the sun set the two boys and Dorothy and Ethel measured and sawed and nailed, with results that satisfied them so well that they did not mind being tired.