THE OLD MAID'S HOUSE: IN PLAN
BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS
Corona had five hundred dollars and some pluck for her enterprise. She had also at her command a trifle for furnishing. But that seemed very small capital. Her friends at large discouraged her generously. Even Tom said he didn't know about that, and offered her three hundred more.
This manly offer she declined in a womanly manner.
"It is to be my house, thank you, Tom, dear. I can live in yours at home." ...
Corona's architectural library was small. She found on the top shelf one book on the construction of chicken-roosts, a pamphlet in explanation of the kindergarten system, a cook-book that had belonged to her grandmother, and a treatise on crochet. There her domestic literature came to an end. She accordingly bought a book entitled "North American Homes"; then, having, in addition, begged or borrowed everything within two covers relating to architecture that was to be found in her immediate circle of acquaintance, she plunged into that unfamiliar science with hopeful zeal.
The result of her studies was a mixed one. It was necessary, it seemed, to construct the North American home in so many contradictory methods, or else fail forever of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that Corona felt herself to be laboring under a chronic aberration of mind.... Then the plans. Well, the plans, it must be confessed, Corona did find it difficult to understand. She always had found it difficult to understand such things; but then she had hoped several weeks of close architectural study would shed light upon the density of the subject. She grew quite morbid about it. She counted the steps when she went up-stairs to bed at night. She estimated the bedroom post when she walked in the cold, gray dawn....
But the most perplexing thing about the plans was how one story ever got upon another. Corona's imagination never fully grappled with this fact, although her intellect accepted it. She took her books down-stairs one night, and Susy came and looked them over.
"Why, these houses are all one-story," said Susy. "Besides, they're nothing but lines, anyway. I shouldn't draw a house so."
Corona laughed with some embarrassment and no effort at enlightenment. She was not used to finding herself and Susy so nearly on the same intellectual level as in this instance. She merely asked: "How should you draw it?"
"Why, so," said Susy, after some severe thought. So she took her little blunt lead pencil, that the baby had chewed, and drew her plan as follows:
SUSY'S PLAN
Corona made no comment upon this plan, except to ask Susy if that were the way to spell L; and then to look in the dictionary, and find that it was not spelled at all. Tom came in, and asked to see what they were doing.
"I'm helping Corona," said Susy, with much complacency. "These architects' things don't look any more like houses than they do like the first proposition in Euclid; and the poor girl is puzzled."
"I'll help you to-morrow, Co," said Tom, who was in too much of a hurry to glance at his wife's plan. But to-morrow Tom went into town by the early train, and when Corona emerged from her "North American Homes," with wild eye and knotted brow, at 5 o'clock p.m., she found Susy crying over a telegram which ran:
Called to California immediately. Those lost cargoes A No. 1 hides turned up. Can't get home to say good-by. Send overcoat and flannels by Simpson on midnight express. Gone four weeks. Love to all.
Tom.
This unexpected event threw Corona entirely upon her own resources; and, after a few days more of patient research, she put on her hat, and stole away at dusk to a builder she knew of down-town—a nice, fatherly man who had once built a piazza for Tom and had just been elected superintendent of the Sunday-school. These combined facts gave Corona confidence to trust her case to his hands. She carried a neat little plan of her own with her, the result of several days' hard labor. Susy's plan she had taken the precaution to cut into paper dolls for the baby. Corona found the good man at home, and in her most business-like manner presented her points.
"Got any plan in yer own head?" asked the builder, hearing her in silence. In silence Corona laid before him the paper which had cost her so much toil.
It was headed in her clear black hand:
PLAN
FOR A SMALL BUT HAPPY
HOME
This was
CORONA'S PLAN
"Well," said the builder, after a silence,—"well, I've seen worse."
"Thank you," said Corona, faintly.
"How does she set?" asked the builder.
"Who set?" said Corona, a little wildly. She could think of nothing that set but hens.
"Why, the house. Where's the points o' compass?"
"I hadn't thought of those," said Corona.
"And the chimney," suggested the builder. "Where's your chimneys?"
"I didn't put in any chimneys," said Corona.
"Where did you count on your stairs?" pursued the builder.
"Stairs? I—forgot the stairs."
"That's natural," said Mr. Timbers. "Had a plan brought me once without an entry or a window to it. It wasn't a woman did it, neither. It was a widower, in the noospaper line. What's your scale?"
"Scale?" asked Corona, without animation.
"Scale of feet. Proportions."
"Oh! I didn't have any scales, but I thought about forty feet front would do. I have but five hundred dollars. A small house must answer."
The builder smiled. He said he would show her some plans. He took a book from his table and opened at a plate representing a small, snug cottage, not uncomely. It stood in a flourishing apple-orchard, and a much larger house appeared dimly in the distance, upon a hill. The cottage was what is called a "story-and-half" and contained six rooms. The plan was drawn with the beauty of science.
"There," said Mr. Timbers, "I know a lady built one of those upon her brother-in-law's land. He give her the land, and she just put up the cottage, and they was all as pleasant as pease about it. That's about what I'd recommend to you, if you don't object to the name of it."
"What is the matter with the name?" asked Corona.
"Why," said the builder, hesitating, "it is called the Old Maid's House—in the book."
"Mr. Timbers," said Corona, with decision, "why should we seek further than the truth? I will have that house. Pray, draw me the plan at once."