“And I don’t see why it couldn’t be stenciled,” said Ethel Brown. “Something like the walls upstairs in the apple-blossom room, only of course something that would be appropriate for this room. But even if you didn’t like that idea,” she went on, “I think the pongee silk alone would be beautiful.”
Mrs. Smith liked that idea, too, but she hesitated to give her final decision until she had examined a certain homespun linen which she had had recommended to her as a possible success from the point of view of color.
“Now that you have finished your cocoa, I want you to move your chairs over here, where you can look into the dining room,” she said. “You see, I’ve had the dining room separated from this room by folding doors; there will be door curtains also, but I want to be able to shut off the room entirely from this room if I choose. Now, while we talk about the furniture here, look into the dining room and get the shape of it into your minds, so that you can regard it as a sort of outgrowth of this room. Are you comfortable now?”
They said they were and went on to discuss the furniture.
“Will all of the pieces be upholstered with the same material?” asked Ethel Blue.
“Oh, no,” cried Ethel Brown. “Let’s have two or three different shades of brown, and one in the right shade of yellow and one or two in the same dull blue of the rug.”
Again Miss Graham nodded.
“You want to repeat in the furniture the colors of the rug,” she said. “They give you a wide range of tones because these Oriental rugs may have as many as twenty-five shades of blue, so finely graduated that you can hardly tell them apart, except with a reading glass. The brown and gold of the furniture will bring out the brown and gold of the floor covering and you must be careful that the yellow of the furniture is not so brilliant as to overpower the more delicate yellow of your walls. There should be a sort of scale from the yellowish white wood-work which is your highest note, down to the darkest shade of brown.”
“Now, that we’ve decided about the furniture, tell me what general idea you have for the dining room,” said Mrs. Smith. “I’m all excitement to hear what you have to say about the dining room, because it isn’t quite clear in my own mind, and I want to work it out with you.”
“You want it to be an outgrowth of this room,” said Helen, “and you don’t want it treated like an entirely separate room.”