“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 guess we 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 and paints and patterns lying there; and then he glanced back at her in astonishment.
“Say, you don’t mean to say you’re makin’ 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.”