“Then you don’t break your back bending over them when you’re hunting for something,” exclaimed Helen. “That’s splendid. She seems to have practical ideas as well as ornamental ones.”
“She thought there ought to be a fire bucket closet up there, too. You know Aunt Louise has had them put in on all the other floors, but she didn’t think of it there.”
“What is it?” asked Mrs. Morton.
“Just a narrow closet with four shelves. On each of the lower three are fire buckets to be kept full of water all the time and on the top shelf are some of those hand grenade things and chemical squirt guns. They don’t look very well when they’re right out in sight. This way covers them up but makes them just as convenient. There is to be no lock on the door of the closet and FIRE is to be painted outside so every one will know where it is even if he gets rattled when the fire really happens.”
“Are the maids’ rooms to be on the attic floor?” asked Mrs. Morton.
“Two little beauties, and a bath-room between them. One room is to be pink and the other blue and they’re going to have ivory paint and fluffy curtains just like Dorothy’s.”
“Did you think to say anything to Miss Graham about the Club’s using the attic in winter for weekly meetings?”
“Dorothy did. She thought a movable platform would be a great scheme; one wide enough for us to use for a little stage when we wanted to have singing or recitations up there. She picked out a good place for the phonograph, where the shape of the ceiling wouldn’t make the sound queer, and she thought rattan furniture stained brown would be pretty, and scrim curtains—not dead white ones, but a sort of goldeny cream that would harmonize with the wood. There are lovely big cotton rugs in dull blues, that aren’t expensive, she says; and if we don’t want to see the row of trunks and chests against the wall we can arrange screens that will shut them out of sight and will also take the place of the pictures that you can’t hang on a wall that slopes the wrong way.”
“I don’t see, then, but Aunt Louise will have an attic and we’ll have a club room and both parties to the transaction will be pleased,” beamed Helen, who, as president of the Club was always careful that the members should be comfortable when they gathered for their weekly talking and planning and working.
“Doesn’t Miss Graham come from Washington?” asked Ethel Blue dreamily, half awakening to the conversation.