“I’ll leave you now to finish the chair, while I hunt along the mountain trail to find certain dye materials,” said the Captain, as the work on the chair progressed finely.
But the barrel-chair was finished before Mrs. Vernon returned. “I couldn’t find a thing that would do. I hunted most thoroughly, too. You see, it is too early for walnuts—if they were ripe we could stain the wood and burlaps a fine brown. Then I looked for different wild plants that will dye things, but there were none.”
“Verny, Eliza colors our Easter eggs with onion peel. I see you have a lot of onions in the store-room, but I am not sure they will color burlap,” said Betty.
“Just the thing, Betty! How wonderful of you to remember it. We will boil the skins until the water is a deep brown-orange and then we will try it on the burlap.”
The onions had to be peeled, and this was not a pleasant task, as eyes began to weep and the girls had to sniffle as they skinned the onions, but they were determined to finish their upholstery work as long as they had started it.
The onion peels were placed over a fire to simmer slowly and the girls then went to work on the excelsior filling for the cushions. Meantime, Mrs. Vernon cut the burlap the required sizes to fit the seats of the chairs, and also cut oval panels for the backs.
Well, the onion peel dyed the material a soft ochre color, and was tried on the barrel-wood too. But it failed to stain that. The cushions were tacked down with small tacks, and the chairs looked most inviting to the manufacturers.
The cushions were tacked down with small tacks
Each scout took a turn in trying the chairs, and each pronounced them most luxurious, but Mrs. Vernon withheld such high praise as “luxury,” saying instead “They’re hard as rocks!”