“This house has such a wonderful concrete foundation,” said Margaret, “that I should think it would be always perfectly solid.”
“So should I,” answered Miss Graham, “but there’s always a chance that some part of the soil beneath may give a little when the full weight of a house rests upon it. The settling of a house for only a half inch or an inch would play havoc with the plaster on these walls.”
“You think we’d better hold back the paper for a final resort?” asked Mrs. Smith.
“I never advise paper in bed-rooms unless there’s good reason to do so,” answered the decorator. “Here is what I should suggest for an apple-blossom room—though perhaps you have some ideas that you would like to have carried out?” she interrupted herself to ask Dorothy.
“No,” said Dorothy, “as long as it’s pink and pretty I don’t care how it is decorated.”
Miss Graham stood in the centre of the room now, noticing how the sunshine fell on the floor, the shadow at the end where the sleeping porch was, and the possible positions for the various articles of furniture.
“I seem to see these walls washed with a white which is tinted with a faint flush of pink,” said Miss Graham slowly, as she thought it out. “That means a pink so delicate that it will not irritate the weariest nerves and will soothe to sleep by its beauty. The wood-work should be similar in tone but a trifle more like ivory. Do you know that chintz that has blurry, indefinite flowers on it?”
Dorothy said that she did.
“I saw a lovely piece of it the other day with a design of apple-blossoms. I should use that as a covering for your bed, your couch, your chairs, and for hangings for the windows. Then across one end of the wall—on that shadiest side,—I should throw a branch of apple-blossoms, painted in the same blurry, indefinite way in which the flowers appear on the chintz. I knew a man who was enough of the artist in his soul to do the thing as if the wall had suddenly grown thin and through it you could see an apple tree in blossom out in the orchard.”
“I think that would be perfectly lovely,” said Dorothy, and all the others expressed the greatest pleasure at the proposed scheme of decoration.